We Can Make It If We Run
by ScribeofArda
Summary: A series of oneshots, as a sequel to In a Field of Blood and Stone (an elven PoV of the Battle of the Five Armies, canonic to the book). What happened to the Elves of Mirkwood after the events at Erebor? How did they go on, after everything that they had seen and done? Featuring elves, a few men and an old wizard who pops up when there's trouble. Resuming in few weeks (1/06/2017).
1. Introduction

**We Can Make It If We Run**

 **Introduction**

 _For new people, firstly: hello and welcome! Some details of these stories refer directly to In a Field of Blood and Stone, which is a canonic telling of the Battle of the Five Armies from an elven pov, and things would make more sense if you read that first, but you don't have to!_

 _So I know it's been a while, but here is the beginning of the sequel to In a Field of Blood and Stone. I have been ridiculously busy with exams, and only finished on Tuesday, so I just didn't have the motivation to get around to doing this until then. On the plus side, I now have the entire summer to myself without any work to do! And the awful anxiety that comes from having to wait for exam results... Oh, and my country is rapidly going downhill, because the majority just voted to leave the EU. The value of the pound has plummeted, there's been a rapid increase in hate crimes because this has legitimised the racism and xenophobia of idiots in this country, and I think most of Europe is pretty annoyed with us right now. As a young English person who, along with 75% of people my age, voted to remain, I am so sorry to the rest of Europe for the people in my country who allowed this to happen._

 _The title comes from another Bruce Springsteen song: Thunder Road. If you are ever driving really fast down a long road with the windows down and the wind in your hair, then this is the song for that moment. Anyway, this sequel isn't a sequel in that it's one full story- instead, this will be a series of interconnected oneshots and short stories that follow up the events of In a Field of Blood and Stone, focusing mainly on the elves (of course). There will be Bard and Gandalf appearing in later stories, though, and I have those planned/in the process of being written._

 _So this introduction was only meant to be a few hundred words long. That didn't happen. As far as the length of these stories go, it's pretty short- I have one story for this already written that's something like 20k long and will be published in several chapters- but it's still a few thousand words. I'm tentatively planning to publish a chapter once a week, to give me enough time to actually write them, but we'll see how it goes._

 _As always, reviews are very welcome, and I only own Belhadron and Rhavaniel._

 _0-o-0-o-0_

The woods were tantalisingly close. They could see the boughs of the closest trees, the leaves having turned a thousand shades of autumn now winter was fast approaching. Trees carven out of stone, stark white against the dark woods, were stood marking the entrance to their realm, and every elf had been watching them almost hungrily, weary and more than ready to step underneath the boughs of their realm once more.

Erebor was behind them, its grey peak shrouded in cloud. Laketown, or the beginnings of it, sat behind them too, as did Bard and all his people, and the graves and pyres of all those they'd left behind. It had been two weeks, and the edges had been sanded down on the raw grief that they all bore, but they were still sharp. It would take much longer for the wounds to fade to scars.

Thranduil turned his face into the wind briefly, his cloak snapping around his heels. "Thank you, Mithrandir," he said softly. "I am aware enough to know that this would have ended far worse if you had not been here."

Gandalf smiled. "How much did it take for you to admit that?" he asked. Thranduil's lips curved in amusement, and he shook his head.

"I would tell you that you are welcome in my halls at any time," he said. "But I don't think it makes any difference to you. Just try not to bring any trouble with you when you come. We've had enough of that for a while."

Gandalf huffed a laugh. "The trouble finds me, not the other way around," he said. "I'll come back in a year or so, when I have the time and have returned from the Shire." He saw the look in Thranduil's eye. "I'll make sure Bilbo gets back home safely, of course," he said. "And I will keep an eye on him. You could too, if you were so inclined."

Thranduil chuckled briefly. "I do not have eyes west of the mountains, and you know it," he replied. "But I will keep an ear to the ground. There's a far greater storm coming, and we need to weather it somehow."

"Tell Legolas not to get into too much trouble," Gandalf said. "And remember Thorin's words. He was right; there does have to be some kindness in this world, if we are to succeed."

Thranduil inclined his head. "Master Baggins is proof of that," he said. "I will love and protect Legolas as I have always done. You do not need to worry about that, of all things, Mithrandir." His voice had grown fierce as his gaze flickered back towards where Legolas was waiting. "We'll come back from this," he murmured. "I will make sure of it."

Gandalf nodded, and clasped his shoulder. "Take care, old friend," he said.

"And you," Thranduil replied with a smile. "Safe journey. And thank you, Mithrandir. For everything."

Gandalf bowed his head, and then walked back to his horse. Bilbo Baggins raised a hand in farewell, sat astride his pony, and Thranduil echoed it, thinking of the gift Bilbo had given him, only a few minutes ago, and all the days after Erebor where he had been so surprised by the halfling. He had meant it when he had said that Bilbo Baggins was perhaps braver than all of them, for all their bows and bright swords, and he found himself hoping that the halfling had a good life.

He mounted his horse and rode back to the head of his army. Legolas and Belhadron were waiting there, talking quietly to Rhavaniel. She was seated in front of Belhadron on his horse, her arm securely bound to her chest. She barely seemed lucid, but it was, Thranduil supposed, better than being unconscious.

Legolas glanced up as he approached. He had said his farewells earlier, and now looked impatient to return home. Belhadron looked so concerned over Rhavaniel, and Legolas, that Thranduil wasn't sure he'd fully noticed that they were almost home.

"Are they still going the long way round?" he asked.

Thranduil nodded. "I do not think Master Baggins wants to step under our boughs again for a little while," he replied. "But they will be safe enough, and I do not doubt that we will see Mithrandir again shortly." He glanced at Rhavaniel, who looked as if she might have fallen back to sleep again. "Are we ready?"

Legolas nodded, and without a word, Thranduil turned and began to ride east once more. The army fell into step behind them, and the closer they got to home, the more Thranduil could sense the strange undercurrent of relief and tension that was building. He was well versed in such a feeling, remembered it easily from when he returned home after the Last Alliance.

The trees of their home grew closer and closer, until finally they were within the very shadow of the wood itself. Legolas found himself staring at the trees with a weary longing he hadn't felt before. He felt exhausted, and he knew the other captains were the same. Belhadron had dark circles beneath his eyes from staying up each night to watch over Rhavaniel, who had started to run a fever and was restless. The other captains were just as tired, stretched too thin trying to keep everything under control whilst still mourning two of their own.

By the time they reached the stronghold itself, if was getting dark, and Legolas had already resigned himself to working through the night in order to even begin the efforts needed to ensure things returned to normal as smoothly as possible. Thranduil and the captains were the first into the large courtyard, and their faces remained carefully impassive at the sight of elves waiting for them, who looked like they were trying so hard to keep their hope banked, because they were elves of the Woodland Realm, and they knew what they could be facing upon the army's return.

Despite promising his father he would get some rest, Legolas spent most of the night working. A lot of the elves in the army had been drafted and had lives outside of being soldiers, and so they went home, drifting away in groups to go back to their settlements and villages. But there was still so much to do.

Belhadron had disappeared as soon as they arrived, taking Rhavaniel down from the saddle and carrying her inside to the healers. From what Legolas heard, he had stayed there until he was certain he wasn't needed, and then disappeared to do whatever work needed to be done.

Thranduil spent the night behind closed doors with his advisors and council, and what they discussed did not pass from the room that night. The elite companies, the elves that the captains themselves directly commanded, they didn't rest either, content to follow their captains in everything. Legolas was fairly sure, when another of his archers came to him asking what else needed to be done, that they were all afraid of stopping, because of what might catch up with them if they did.

0-o-0-o-0

Belhadron tracked down Legolas to the common room of the captains in the early hours of the morning, a few hours before dawn. He was working, drawing up plans with one of the lesser captains who had remained behind to guard the realm for what to do now. Belhadron walked in, rapping his knuckles on the desk as he cleared his throat.

"I'm officially calling it," he said, levelling Legolas with a look. "Chambers. Now. Or I'm getting your father."

Legolas rolled his eyes, and didn't even look up from the table. "I'm busy," he murmured. "Give me another fifteen minutes."

"No, because fifteen minutes will turn into half an hour, which will turn into an hour, and then neither of us will get any sleep tonight." Belhadron walked over and took the quill out of Legolas' hand. At a glare from him, the lesser captain got up and quickly left.

Legolas sighed, looking irritated. "There's a lot of work that needs to get done," he said wearily, rubbing at his eyes. Belhadron shook his head.

"As your second in command, I am telling you that you are no use to anyone if you are so tired you cannot think straight," he said. He grabbed the chair, pulling it out from under the table. "Get up. You're going to bed."

Legolas rolled his eyes again, but didn't protest, and it was a sign of how tired he was that he merely got up when Belhadron grabbed his arm. The hallways passed in a blur, the activity slowly dying down until they passed through the doors into the royal quarters and it was nearly silent. There was a light coming from underneath the door to Thranduil's chambers, but Belhadron ignored it as he headed for Legolas' rooms.

There was the sound of a door opening, and the two of them looked up to see Thranduil standing in the doorway. Belhadron ducked his head, and then gently pushed Legolas towards his father as he headed towards Legolas' rooms.

"I thought I told you to get some rest," Thranduil said, though the stern tone to his voice slipped easily as he spoke, and he merely sounded tired, and fond.

"There's so much that needs to be done," Legolas murmured. "And with two captains dead and another badly injured, there's more work for the rest of us to do." He sighed, running a hand through his hair. "We've only just-"

"Greenleaf." Thranduil cut in, gripping Legolas' shoulder. "Legolas. You do not have to shoulder all of the responsibilities on your own. And I know you think that if you keep working, then the enormity of what has happened won't reach you, but you know that isn't true. And you cannot exhaust yourself like this."

Legolas' lips twisted in a smile that didn't reach his eyes. "I'm sorry," he murmured.

At those words, something in Thranduil's expression cracked, and he tugged Legolas forwards, wrapping his arms around him and pulling him into an embrace. Legolas drew in a breath and clung to Thranduil, hands tangling in his tunic. He choked on a breath and heaved a sob, just one, pressing his face into his father's shoulder.

"I know," Thranduil murmured. "I know." He smoothed a hand down Legolas' back. "You are allowed to find it hard," he said. "You are allowed to take some time to pull yourself together. But we have come through this, and we are still here. Remember that."

Legolas nodded, and Thranduil let himself hold his son for one more moment before pulling away. "Get some rest," he said. "And take as much as you need. I don't want to see you working before midday. And tell Belhadron that the same applies to him, because I think he's had less sleep than me, given how often he's stayed awake to keep an eye on Rhavaniel."

Legolas nodded again. "That might be a little difficult, but I will try," he said.

Thranduil smiled tenderly, pushing a loose lock of hair out of Legolas' face. "I am your King, and I can make it an order," he said, but there was no heat in his voice. "I have the healers on orders to notify me immediately if anything changes with Rhavaniel, so if something does happen, I will let you know. That might make Belhadron shut up and go to sleep."

Legolas huffed a laugh. "I'll tell him that," he said.

Thranduil pressed a kiss to his forehead, and pushed him gently in the direction of his rooms. "Go to sleep," he murmured. "Everything will still be here when you wake up."

Legolas nodded, and Thranduil watched as he slipped into his own rooms, the door falling shut behind him. He sighed, and then returned to his study.

0-o-0-o-0

Legolas let the door fall shut behind him. There was a fire burning in the hearth already, and Belhadron was in the middle of grabbing spare blankets out of the wardrobe and piling them on the divan in Legolas' room. "I assume your father told you to go to sleep," he murmured, tossing a pillow onto the divan as well.

Legolas smiled wearily. "He said he doesn't want to see either of us working before midday," he replied, shedding himself of weapons and his leathers. "He'll come and tell us if anything happens with Rhavaniel, by the way, so you don't need to get up early to check on her."

Belhadron huffed what could be a laugh, if he didn't sound so weary. "I'm fairly sure your father would find me, throw me back in here and bar the door if I left before midday," he said. He tugged off his leather jacket, draping it over a chair, and toed off his boots. He glanced over at Legolas, who was leaning against the poster of his bed. "Go to sleep," he said, shoving the cushions off the divan and replacing them with blankets and a pillow. Legolas shrugged, and Belhadron sat down on the edge of the divan.

"I'll tell you what you told me on the shores of the lake," he said, running one hand back through his hair and tugging briefly at the knots and tangles he found. "We've come back every single time before. We'll come back now. We'll go on. We can't do anything else."

Legolas smiled softly, ducking his head. "I know," he murmured. He pulled back the covers and all but fell into bed, exhaustion quickly catching up with him. Belhadron lay down on the divan, fussing with the blankets until he was satisfied.

They fell into sleep quickly, and the room was silent save for the crackle of the fire in the hearth. They were exhausted, weighed down by grief and worry and responsibilities that gripped their shoulders and clung to them as they walked on, but for now, they were asleep and the weight on them had lifted, just for a few hours.

It was going to take a lot of work to get back to a semblance of normal, but they knew that, and they were ready. It would look better in the morning. And if it didn't, then they would work to get the morning where they woke up and it did look better, and they wouldn't stop until they reached it. After all, they didn't know what else to do but keep going.

 _finis_

 _So that's the introduction, I hope you enjoyed it. I'll put up the next story, another oneshot, next Saturday. I have a few stories written, and quite a few planned, but if you want to see anything specific in this sequel, then feel free to let me know and I'll be more than happy to try and accommodate it! As always, reviews are very welcome. It's nice to be back._


	2. 1: Restless Nights

**We Can Make It If We Run**

 **Chapter One: Restless Nights**

 _Apologies if this is a little late for anyone- it's still Saturday for me, but for anyone in mainland Europe, it might already be Sunday. We had relatives around and so I couldn't just shut myself in a room and go on my laptop..._

 _This is the first official chapter, and is the first thing I wrote of the sequel. This one is very much focused on Legolas and Thranduil, and is just one chapter- little bit of angst, and then some fluff, with plenty of father and son moments. It is set about a week after the introduction as well- the stories going up will be in chronological order, every time, but I won't be documenting every single moment, so there will be time jumps where a few weeks pass, etc, in between stories._

 _The next story after this is much longer, and will cover a number of chapters, and for a while it will pretty much only be Rhavaniel and Belhadron- the story is about the two of them going back to their family homes, and Rhavaniel's recovery from her injuries. That one gets rather angsty at one point, because Rhavaniel and Belhadron have a massive argument, but for that, you will have to wait and see what happens..._

 _Also, headcanon time: Thranduil's nickname for Legolas is Greenleaf- he used it in In a Field of Blood and Stone at a few moments, and will only really use it when Legolas is upset or angry, as in this story. I decided upon this because it's cute. That's it, there's no other relevance for it, it's just cute to me._

 _Anyway, hope you enjoy this chapter. As always, reviews are very welcome._

 _0-o-0-o-0_

Legolas all but fell into his bed. He'd carefully set his long knives and bow next to his bed with his quiver, all within reach, but didn't do much else other than toe off his boots and shrug off his thicker hunting tunic before letting himself fall onto the covers.

It had been a long week.

After maybe two weeks of travelling, they'd finally arrived home. Arrived home, to see countless faces watching and waiting for the news they'd all expected someone else to receive. The soldiers bore it well, both those who had marched to Erebor, and those who had remained to guard the realm. The others left behind, those unaccustomed to grief beyond the facts of it, beyond knowing it existed, did not fare so well when the news was bad.

Nothing had happened whilst they had been gone. In idle moments when his mind strayed too far from the countless tasks in front of them, Legolas found himself bitterly thinking that perhaps something should have happened here. Something to equate everything they'd gone through outside Erebor with what they'd returned to. It would make everything here seem a bit more familiar, in a way.

That had all been days ago. Since then they'd been busy, not even wanting to stop, for fear they wouldn't recognise everything around them. There was so much to do, and in the week since they'd returned Legolas and the other captains, those remaining and the newly promoted to try and fill the gaps of Thenidon and Carandor, had only made a start at rebuilding their army.

Legolas sighed, shifting to try and get more comfortable. Even with everything, he was hopeful. They'd come back from this. He didn't think they knew how to do anything else.

Slowly, the weight lifting from his shoulders, he fell asleep.

0-o-0-o-0

He woke up screaming.

The sound caught in his throat and he choked, the slick feeling of blood still underneath his hands, the iron tang of it still on his tongue. Legolas shot upright, kicking away the tangle of the covers as he rolled and, in one fluid movement, reached over and grabbed one of his knives.

It was innate instinct that had carried him this far and for a moment he stood in a defensive position, knife gripped in his hand. The remnants of the dreams chased themselves around inside his mind and it took a few seconds for Legolas' training, so ingrained by now that he called it instinct, to fade.

When it did, Legolas set the knife carefully down on the bedside table before he let himself collapse back onto the bed. He heaved in a breath, his hands beginning to shake as he dropped his head into them.

Legolas sucked in another breath, trying to will his breathing to slow. He could hear was the rasping sound of his gasps, the beat of his heart in his ears, over and over again, faster and faster, until the sounds overcame anything else, until it was all that he could hear.

He couldn't help thinking that it was better than hearing the screams he'd dreamt.

"Elbereth," Legolas murmured, squeezing his eyes shut. That turned out to be a bad idea. In the darkness all that he saw was the images that were chasing him still, the dead bodies littered across the valley floor, the blood and everything else that came with death.

He could still see Belhadron, sprawled on the ground with blood flowing steadily across the rocks from a head wound. He wouldn't get up. He wouldn't move. Legolas felt the dread gripping at him, clawing its way up his throat, and it was all the worse because he could remember it all from only weeks ago.

His next breath keened out through his throat and Legolas fought to stop himself doubling over. He knew better than this. He could do better than this.

He didn't know how long he sat there, hands shaking as they carded through his hair, tugging on the gold strands running through his fingers. He cursed in a shaky voice, waiting until the rush of blood in his ears began to quieten, until the potency of everything he'd just seen began to finally fade.

With a deep sigh, Legolas fell back on his bed. He was safe. Belhadron was alive and safe, probably deeply asleep in his room a few halls away. Rhavaniel was alive and safe, even if her arm was so mangled that they weren't sure if it would ever heal properly. They were all safe, for now.

He lay there, repeating the words again and again in his mind, hoping that he would believe it if he thought it enough.

0-o-0-o-0

Thranduil paused in the hallway. The torch in the bracket was burning steadily, but was low. It was late in the night, probably actually early morning. The hallway was empty, as it should be. This was the private quarters of the royal family, and nobody entered without express permission, barring a few trusted elves like Thranduil's advisors and captains like Belhadron.

Thranduil waited for a few moments, listening, and then sighed softly. He shut his door behind him with an almost inaudible click and then walked across the hall to Legolas' room, trying to be as quiet as he could. He paused again outside the door.

On the other side, he could hear harsh breathing, and then a low keening noise. His chest tightened, and he nearly threw open the door there and then. The only thing that kept him back was the quiet uncertainty in his mind as to whether Legolas would want him to burst into his room.

Over the past few weeks Thranduil had had some harsh reminders of just how much his son meant to him, how much he would give to keep him and the realm safe. And he knew better than almost anyone here how easily things could linger. But Legolas was a seasoned warrior, a captain and commander and a lot more than just his son.

He didn't know what to do. And he hated it.

Thranduil clenched his jaw, and his hand lingered by the doorknob for what may have been seconds, or what may have been minutes. He didn't pay attention. He was far too busy remembering the past few weeks to pay attention to the time. And with that came all the dread and worry and even fear that he'd been far too busy to let manifest into anything until they'd returned home and he'd stopped, if only for a night.

A thought came unbidden to him, and his hand dropped to his side. He turned on one heel and quietly went back to his room.

0-o-0-o-0

Legolas didn't bother looking up as his door was pushed open. He had gone from lying on his bed to sitting on the end, head buried in his hands, when he'd felt too exposed and like he couldn't get on his feet as quickly. "I'm fine," he murmured through his hands, which still shook no matter what he did.

Thranduil watched him from the entrance to the room. "You are allowed not to be," he replied. Legolas still didn't look up, and Thranduil sighed. He stepped into the room. "Greenleaf," he said tenderly, reaching out and pulling Legolas' long hair out of his face.

Legolas huffed a humourless laugh, and Thranduil smiled, even though the sound made something in his chest twist once more. He carded his fingers through Legolas' hair and Legolas leant a little into the touch, much like he had done as a child. Thranduil could remember long days spent outside, a book in his hand and his young child asleep in his lap as he ran his hand through his soft hair. But the image was overshadowed by that of his son, exhausted and almost driven beyond the edge of endurance, asleep under cloaks in a tent outside Erebor, hair knotted with mud and blood as Thranduil ran his fingers through it. He felt once again the pang of worry and dread that he'd gotten very good at suppressing, when it came to his son being hurt.

Thranduil didn't say anything else, didn't do anything other than slowly run his fingers through Legolas' hair and watch his son's hands tremble in his lap. After a few minutes he sighed.

Legolas looked up, and for the first time noticed the long rolled package that Thranduil had under one arm. Thranduil took his hand back and pulled off the cover to reveal two sheathed swords. The handles were ornate, dark ash inlaid with steel, and the scabbards were made well, if worn. There was a band of green leather around the base of each hilt. They denoted the blades as sparring swords, blunted and useless in a real fight.

Thranduil held one out, wordlessly. The corners of Legolas' mouth curled in the beginnings of a smile. Grabbing his discarded boots, he pulled them on and got to his feet. He reached out and took the sword.

0-o-0-o-0

Belhadron found himself unable to sleep once again, and was wandering aimlessly around the stronghold. He contemplated going to Legolas' rooms, but Legolas needed sleep as much as anyone else, and he didn't want to disturb him.

He'd already spent the first few nights back in the stronghold sleeping on the divan in Legolas' room. After spending weeks staying in a camp of thousands of elves all around them it was a little jarring to be left alone in a room, and though they knew that they were now safe, it could be difficult to remember in the middle of the night. But he hadn't even slept well then, actually falling off the divan on the third night, after a particularly bad nightmare where Legolas had fallen down from Ravenhill and he hadn't been able to get to him in time, no matter how fast he'd run. In the morning they'd both been tired and snappish, and Belhadron had gone back to his own room after that.

He'd spent tonight with Rhavaniel until she had finally fallen asleep, the lines of pain smoothing out on her face. She was healing, but ever so slowly, and Belhadron could tell that she was worried. Her arm was a cobweb of stitches and slowly healing gashes, and pretty much everything that could be damaged was damaged. Tendons, muscles, even the nerves, they had all been marred by the blade breaking through her arm and the poison that followed it.

Belhadron groaned, and resisted the urge to hit his head against the nearest wall in an effort to quieten his thoughts. The stronghold was quiet, though there were a few others with the same idea as him. They nodded at each other as they passed, recognising the restlessness that was impossible to shake.

He neared the indoor training halls, which were often standing empty unless the weather was bad. He knew the rooms well, had spent a fair amount of time in them training over the centuries, and the door to the sparring room was ajar. He quietly walked over and looked inside.

The room was large, with sparring circles etched across the floor. There were banners hanging on the wall, weapons lying organised around the room. On one wall was a large blackboard that they used for some training sessions, and piled beneath it were cloth mats. Belhadron had many memories of being thrown onto the mats, on one memorable occasion by Rhavaniel, who had completely decimated him when they sparred.

For now, the mats were neatly stacked to one side. Two elves were in the middle of the room, and Belhadron watched as Legolas, tunic slipping haphazardly off one shoulder and clinging to his back with sweat, lunged at Thranduil. Thranduil parried the blow and then they were moving across the room, the ringing of steel filling it.

Legolas was on the attack, and Belhadron knew that Thranduil was letting him continue the bout for as long as he wanted to. After all, he'd seen his King fight, and Legolas was not a swordsman. Thranduil could easily end the bout if he wanted to. But then that was hardly the point of this midnight session.

Finally Legolas dropped his blade, the point resting on the floor. He doubled over, breathing heavily. Thranduil wiped his forehead with the hem of his tunic. "You need to watch your left side," he said. "You leave yourself unguarded at times. And keep your wrist strong."

Legolas straightened with a huff. "I get thrown by the weight," he replied. " Swords are a lot heavier than knives. I'll get used to it."

"You'd better do that quickly," Thranduil said. "Again." He tapped Legolas' left side with his blade and then stepped back a few paces, swinging his sword in his hand. Legolas straightened and stretched out his arms. Without warning he suddenly lunged at Thranduil, sword twisting in his hand so the edge was aiming straight for Thranduil's chest. Thranduil stepped back and parried, twisting the blade away. Legolas spun on his heel, and this time he went to the left, protecting his left side. Thranduil nodded in approval.

"Wrist," he reminded him as he parried another blow and pushed Legolas' blade away. Legolas let it slip and then twisted his arm, trying to keep his wrist straight as his blade came around in a wide arc. Thranduil jumped back and rebalanced himself. He watched Legolas for a moment, assessing, and then pressed forwards, going on the attack with powerful strikes. Legolas scrambled to get into a defensive position, but after a few tense seconds began to hold his own, parrying against the blows and letting them slip around him rather than blocking them with his own strength, which was comparatively little against the King's. Thranduil had always been a swordsman, and a very good one at that.

"Left side," Thranduil said as he delivered another blow, and Legolas moved accordingly. Belhadron watched as they fought back and forth across the room, until even Thranduil was breathing hard. They came to a stop and Legolas pulled at his tunic, tugging at the neckline that stuck to his skin until he got fed up and just pulled it over his head. Thranduil pressed his lips together, looking at the smattered yellowing bruises across Legolas' side.

"Is that still a problem?" he asked, the point of his sword hovering just above the bruised skin as he pointed at it. Legolas shook his head.

"No more than the face," he replied, gesturing at the healing scrapes down one cheek. The bruises were starker there, the scrapes red even against flushed cheeks as they healed. Thranduil reached forwards and gently grabbed Legolas' chin, tilting his head to one side as he looked at the scrapes. His lips were pressed in a thin line now, and after a few seconds Legolas pulled free of his grasp.

"There's nothing I can do about either," he said. "They'll heal soon enough."

From the shadows of the doorway, Belhadron raised a hand to his own gash across his temple. That too was healing well enough, though it itched every time he thought about it. The skin was red and raised, the scabs finally fading into new flesh, but he wasn't particularly bothered by it. A lot of soldiers had injuries a lot worse, ones that would scar. Rhavaniel's arm was going to be a network of scars, once it healed. If it healed.

Thranduil nodded shortly. "Again," he said, and he barely gave Legolas time to get into a position before he attacked, driving forwards with his blade. Legolas spun and parried, his hair swinging around his shoulders. He took a few steps back and pushed it out of his face before he thrust forwards, blade scraping against Thranduil's with a screech of steel.

Belhadron watched as the bout continued for a few minutes, Thranduil occasionally calling something out to Legolas as he parried another blow and then aimed for the weakness he'd identified. By the end of it Legolas was panting through bared teeth as he lunged at Thranduil, trying to slip beneath his guard. Thranduil ducked back and caught his sword, and then in some movement too fast for Belhadron to follow, he disarmed Legolas. The sparring sword clattered across the floor, and Thranduil rested the point of his blade at the base of Legolas' throat.

Both were breathing hard, chests heaving. Legolas paused, looking down at the sword, and Belhadron could tell what he was going to do before he actually did it, in the sharp glance to the discarded sword and the curve of his lips in the beginnings of a grin. It was barely visible, but it was there. Legolas, without any warning, darted sideways and grabbed Thranduil's wrist, twisting the sword away from him and Thranduil off balance as he rolled and picked up his own sword in one fluid movement. He turned, and attacked Thranduil once more.

Belhadron watched for another few minutes as this bout progressed, but he had seen enough. He turned with the beginnings of a smile playing on his lips, the sound of steel clashing together fading as he walked away.

0-o-0-o-0

Almost all of Legolas' muscles were aching. He put his sword down, resting his hands on his knees and taking in gulps of air. His sweaty palms skidded over the soft leggings he was wearing and he nearly fell forwards, letting out a yelp of surprise.

Thranduil, snorting softly in amusement, picked up the sword. He sheathed both of them. "I think that's enough," he said quietly. His own tunic was sticking to him, and he too was breathing heavily. Legolas looked up, and nodded. They slipped out of the door, the room falling quiet as they left.

Thranduil didn't say anything, but he didn't need to. Already Legolas was walking loosely, the tension fading from his shoulders as they made their way back to the royal quarters. The halls were still quiet, and nobody moved in the passages that they took.

Legolas paused outside his door and looked over his shoulder. "Thank you," he said quietly.

Thranduil smiled softly. He reached out and gently carded his fingers through Legolas' hair, pushing it away from his face. "You're welcome," he murmured. "Sleep well, Greenleaf." Legolas nodded, and then stepped back and went inside his room.

The fire was still burning in the grate and the room was warm, if not hot. Legolas splashed his face with water, but tiredness was now seeping into his bones, and his bed seemed more tempting by the second. He all but fell onto it again, haphazardly pulling the covers over himself. With a sigh, he drifted off to sleep.

He woke to pale morning light streaming through from the balcony, and Belhadron sitting on the end of the bed with an amused expression as he watched Legolas wake, turning the sparring sword that Legolas had left there over in his hands. He arched a brow as Legolas sat up, looking amused. Legolas huffed a laugh, and threw a pillow at him.

"I take it you didn't sleep too well, then," Belhadron said as they headed down the halls together. Legolas considered it for a moment, and then shook his head.

"Actually, it wasn't too bad," he replied. He slung an arm around Belhadron's shoulders, and for the morning at least, the weight on them lifted, if only a little. "Come on," he said, tugging Belhadron forwards. "We have work to do."

 _finis_

 _Next chapter will be up next Saturday, and that will be the first chapter of this longer story about Belhadron and Rhavaniel. After that one, Legolas is back, along with Elladan and Elrohir (that story is being written as we speak, and is looking to be another one that will be multiple chapters long). Hope you enjoyed this, and as always, reviews are very welcome. I'll see you all next Saturday!_


	3. 2: Light in the Fountain (Part One)

**We Can Make It If We Run**

 **Chapter 2: Lights in the Fountain**

 **Part One**

 _Okay, so this is a part of a part of We Can Make It If We Run, if that makes sense- this is the first chapter in a multi-chaptered story within this published work. This story is heavily focused on Belhadron and Rhavaniel, the relationship between them and Rhavaniel's recovery. For those who maybe haven't been around as long, there's a little backstory you might need to know: namely, Belhadron had a younger brother who was killed by orcs whilst on patrol a long time ago (the oneshot Perhaps the Greater is about the events of that) and he doesn't get on very well with his parents, partly because of that- his parents resent him for continuing in the army after their other son died._

 _Rhavaniel's backstory is revealed, in part, in this story, so don't worry if you don't know that much about her!_

 _Hope everyone is having a good holiday. Any questions about Rhavaniel or the stories, or if you want to see anything in particular in this series, feel free to let me know, and I'm always around to chat!_

 _As always, reviews are very welcome._

 _0-o-0-o-0_

She woke up screaming.

That was new.

Rhavaniel almost laughed as the thought came unbidden into her mind. She lay back on her bed, drawing in deep long breaths as her mind rebelled against her control. For a few moments, she could see the black churning swarm of orcs around her, could hear their shrieks and cries as she scrambled through them, desperately searching for grey stone amidst the darkness, somewhere she could stand and fight. But in the next second the images faded, and she saw her room around her once again.

Rhavaniel laughed softly to herself, because it was a better option than screaming or weeping, and sat up. She hadn't woken up screaming for a few weeks now, and at least it was a change from how she'd been waking up from nightmares recently, with choked off gasps. It was novel to have enough voice to scream.

With shaking legs she got up, heading for the jug of water on the dresser. In hindsight, it hadn't been a good idea to let Belhadron leave it on the other side of the room to her bed.

She hadn't realised, before Erebor, how difficult it was to do some things one-handed. Rhavaniel used her good hand to curl the stiff fingers of the other hand, the one covered in a cobweb of healing cuts that were slowly turning into scars, around the earthen cup. Even that movement made her hiss in pain, and the grimace remained on her face as she tried to actually pour the water.

Her hand spasmed, and the cup wobbled and then fell. Rhavaniel cursed as water slopped over the side, dripping down onto the floor, and she leant against the dresser as the water seeped into her sleeves.

Her bags were neatly stacked by the door, waiting to be picked up by someone with two functional hands and be taken to the stables. They had been home for nearly three weeks now, and neither she nor Belhadron could put off going back to their family homes for any longer. They were leaving in the morning, riding north to Belhadron's parents for the night before going on to her family, her aunt and uncle, and her grandmother.

Rhavaniel sighed, and reached for the sling hanging over the end of her bed. There was no point in going back to sleep now.

0-o-0-o-0

Belhadron knocked on the door, and then swung it open. "I don't think you've ever been late in your life," he said, a lazy grin spreading across his face. Rhavaniel looked up from where she was trying to do up the strings of a cloak.

"It turns out it takes a lot longer to do things with only one hand," she shot back quickly. Belhadron huffed a brief laugh, and then crossed the room, reaching out to pull the cloak around her and fasten it at her throat. Rhavaniel wondered if he felt her tense under his hands, as the brief memories of being crowded of orcs, of falling and feeling a heavy weight across her that she was unable to lift flooded her mind. She didn't think she did; Belhadron did nothing but tie off the cloak, and then look down to check her arm.

"It hasn't fallen off in the night," she said, just to get the frown to disappear from Belhadron's face as he gently turned her arm over, checking the healing wounds with surprisingly gentle fingers. He'd been there most days she'd sat for hours with the healers, watching everything they did with a frown and a knife flipping between his fingers.

As she had predicted, Belhadron's frown slowly disappeared and he smiled. "Are you ready to go?" he asked, pulling back and picking up Rhavaniel's bag. Rhavaniel nodded, slipping her arm into the sling around her neck. "I've made Legolas get the horses ready," Belhadron continued with an easy smile as he held the door open for her. "We can leave whenever you're ready."

Rhavaniel forced a smile onto her face, and it was only by the grace of her long years as a spy that allowed her to pass it off as a real smile, even in front of Belhadron. He kept up a fairly steady flow of conversation as they wandered through the halls of the stronghold, which wasn't important and telling at the same time.

If Rhavaniel had been listening to it, perhaps she would have noticed the slight hitch in his voice when they passed a room that, only a few weeks ago, had belonged to a friend. Or she might have noticed how the brightness in his voice was a little too brittle, a little too sharp around the edges, for it to be anything other than a careful front. But her arm was throbbing slowly in time with the steps she took, and her mind felt like it had been covered in the haze that lay over the practice fields in the morning, and she noticed nothing beyond the obvious.

Legolas was in the stables, slipping a saddle onto Rhavaniel's gelding. He huffed a laugh as Belhadron dumped all of their bags down onto the floor. "Did he let you carry any of them?" he asked Rhavaniel as she adjusted the long knife at her belt.

Rhavaniel shook her head. "I didn't even try protesting," she replied. Belhadron rolled his eyes. He didn't even bother trying to say anything in his defence, just picked up one of the bags and passed it over the stable door to Legolas.

Rhavaniel watched, adjusting the bandages around her arm and checking her bag of medical supplies, the only thing Belhadron had let her carry, as Belhadron leant on the stable door and talked softly to Legolas. Legolas looked tired, carrying himself with the alertness of someone who knew that they were tired and that something could easily slip past them if they weren't on edge, all of the time. Rhavaniel recognised the look. They were doing the work of too many captains, the gaps amongst them still not filled, and all of them were tired.

Belhadron's voice was soft. "I've left the reports from last night on your desk in your private study," he said, as he pulled away from the door and slipped into the next stable to get his horse. "The maps are in the common room, on the table, and yesterday's reports are being read by everyone else, so I don't know if you'll ever see them again."

Legolas cut him off with a laugh. "Despite what you may think, I do actually know how to do my job without you," he said, a wry smile curving his lips. Belhadron didn't laugh, and Legolas levelled him with a look over the divide of the two stables. "Remember, I am your commanding officer," he pointed out. "I can make it an order."

Belhadron sighed, and leant against his horse until the mare snorted and sidestepped away from him. "We're barely a month out from returning from Erebor," he said. "The realm is still unstable; we've both seen the reports. And you know our army is depleted. We still have a thousand elves drafted, and I don't think we'll be able to let them go anytime soon. We really need to-"

"Belhadron." Legolas cut him off and levelled him with a fond glare. "We're coping. And we will continue to cope, even if you take two weeks off to go back home." He huffed a soft laugh, and looked over at Rhavaniel. "Can you please drag him out of here before I have to order him to leave?"

Belhadron raised his hands in surrender. "I'm going," he protested, before opening his stable door and whistling for his mare to follow. "Are you sure we have everything?"

Rhavaniel pushed off from the wall she had been leaning against, a smile curving her lips. "You checked all the bags twice," she said. "You helped me pack yesterday." He had done more than helped, had nearly packed everything for her before she got bored and kicked him out, but Rhavaniel didn't bother picking up on the distinction. "We have everything we need."

"You're a day's hard ride from here," Legolas said as they made their way outside, horses following behind them. "I promise I will send word if you're needed."

"It's not as if I will be very useful," Rhavaniel pointed out with a wry look at her arm. There was a careful pause and then Belhadron said something with a smile that Rhavaniel pretended she didn't notice was forced.

She steadfastly refused anyone's help to mount her horse, hauling herself into the saddle with one hand and a wince. Belhadron vaulted on easily, his mare shifting impatiently underneath him.

"Take care," Legolas said, stepping back from the head of Rhavaniel's gelding with a smile and a quick glance between the two of them.

Belhadron's mare pawed at the ground with a snort, and Belhadron stilled her after a few moments. "You will send word if we are needed back," he said. It wasn't a question.

"Of course," Legolas said. He exchanged a glance with Rhavaniel, a wry smile between the two of them, and Belhadron rolled his eyes.

"I'm not being paranoid," he muttered. "It's just common sense." Rhavaniel let out a bark of laughter, and shook her head.

"If I have to deal with this for the next two weeks," she said to Legolas. "I don't care if I'm leaving him in the clutches of my family, I'm coming home early." Legolas laughed, and then finally Rhavaniel and Belhadron turned their horses away and began to leave. Legolas stood outside the stables and watched them ride away, a hand raised in farewell until Belhadron glanced back for one last time, and then they disappeared from view.

0-o-0-o-0

Belhadron looked over at Rhavaniel as they rode. She was adjusting the sling around her heck, her head ducked down as she fiddled with the fabric. Her gelding was ambling along, uncaring of the loose reins slung around his neck. But even injured and tired, dark circles under her eyes, Rhavaniel was a spy, and after only a few seconds she looked up to catch Belhadron's gaze.

"What?" she asked, a smile curving her lips. "I know there's something. You do remember that I'm a spy?" she asked fondly as Belhadron shrugged. "I read people for a living, including you, and you want to ask me something."

Belhadron huffed a laugh. "Do you want help with that sling?" he asked, nudging his mare closer to Rhavaniel. Rhavaniel just looked at him, and she finished tightening the knot with one hand without breaking his gaze.

"That was definitely not what you wanted to ask, and anyone could tell you that," Rhavaniel replied as she picked her reins back up. "What is it?"

Belhadron shrugged. "It's not actually that important," he said, a wry grin twisting his lips. "I was going to ask how much my parents should know about you and what you do. I can't remember if they know who you really are."

Rhavaniel thought for a moment. She was a spy, the captain of the King's spies, and as such she took some cares to keep her name separate from the rumours that sprang up of the Elvenking's hidden blade, his phantom, his spymaster. Very few people beyond her own spies, and the captains that she worked with, knew who she was. Out of all of her network, the connections she had across the realm and beyond, only a select, trusted few could put her real name to her position in the King's ranks.

"They know I'm a captain, of course," she said slowly. "And I think they know I was a ward of the realm. But they don't know what I do. I don't think they'd think very highly of me if they did."

Belhadron snorted, a bitter laugh. "They wouldn't," he replied. "They don't think very highly of my job, and I'm just Legolas' second, not the Elvenking's phantom." He huffed another laugh. "I've always thought your nicknames were strange."

"It's not as if I choose them," Rhavaniel pointed out. "They are the product of rumours and whispers, nothing more." She shrugged, a smile tugging at her lips. "If I happen to encourage them sometimes, well, it's hardly more than a nudge in the right place."

"I'm pretty sure most people don't even know that you are female," Belhadron mused with a wry grin. "Though I suppose that benefits you, with the assumptions people make." He shook his head. "I don't know how you do it."

Rhavaniel shrugged again. "At least half of the time I am away from the stronghold, I am securing my network: visiting old contacts, making new ones and helping my people do the same. Each of my spies has their own network, and then through them I have all of them." She laughed at Belhadron's expression. "It took a long time to master," she admitted. "But the rumours, those are easy enough to manage. The right word, in the right ear…" She trailed off with a wry smile. "Those can start fires, if I need them to."

Belhadron scoffed. "I'm sure they would," he replied. "Those rumours have come back to me once or twice. I do always think it's funny when one of the archers asks me about the latest rumour of the Elvenking's phantom, or whatever you want to call yourself, heading into the southern forests and destroying an entire company of orcs on his own."

Rhavaniel snorted in amusement. "That one was not my fault," she said with a bark of laughter. "That was pure gossip, and I had nothing to do with it." Belhadron merely raised one eyebrow, looking at her in disbelief, and Rhavaniel laughed.

They rode in silence for a few minutes, and Rhavaniel was almost able to ignore the slow, throbbing ache in her arm as her gelding ambled through the bare woods, a light dusting of snow resting on the grey branches above their heads. But despite the chill that had her pulling her cloak around her a little tighter, the sky was a brilliant blue above them. They'd had far worse rides through their realm.

Belhadron fell to studying Rhavaniel again as they rode. She either didn't notice, which was very unlikely, or couldn't yet be bothered to say anything about it, and her gaze was on the woods around them. It was strange how even here, in the midst of their realm with their duties less heavy on their shoulders; he could still see the danger in her, like a snake that was not yet coiled to strike, but could do so in an instant if threatened. He wondered how many weapons she was carrying on her. It would probably be far too many to most people, but then most people did not have the jobs that they did.

Rhavaniel looked over at him again. "I'm not sure if I can even be bothered to ask," she said.

Belhadron just shrugged. He could count at least three weapons on her: the long knife, apparent at her side, the slight bulge along her calf that indicated another knife hidden down the side of her boot. And he knew well enough about the hairpin, currently holding up her hair in a messy bun, which could double as another type of knife if she ran out.

"Five."

Belhadron blinked. "What?" he asked, gaze snapping up to Rhavaniel's face. She was smiling wryly.

"I'm carrying five weapons," she clarified. "I could tell you were wondering."

"Five?" Belhadron studied her again. "Where are the other two?"

"The first one's obvious, of course," Rhavaniel said, touching the long knife at her side, the handle underneath her fingers muted grey and black. Belhadron knew if she unsheathed it, the blade itself would also be muted, the steel dyed dark to better be hidden in the forests.

"I think you've spotted the knife in my boot," Rhavaniel continued, with a flash of a grin at Belhadron. "There's another in the other boot, because I think all my pairs of boots have knives in them. And you know about the garrotte wire in the hem of my coat, don't you?"

Belhadron blinked. "Definitely not," he replied after a pause. "You have a…garrotte wire in the hem of your coat?"

Rhavaniel nodded and dropped her reins, pulling at the bottom corner of her coat with one hand. She turned it over, and Belhadron could just see the small dark ring that was the hold for one end of the wire. "To be fair, I'd forgotten that this coat had this sewn into it until just now," Rhavaniel said, tucking the end of the wire away again. "It's been useful before."

Belhadron blinked again. "That is so…I don't know what it is, but I'm not going to touch that," he said. "So that's four, and then I do know about your hairpin, which makes five." He shook his head, a wry grin creeping across his face. "I suppose I cannot judge, not when I have a knife in my boot and another permanently sewn into one of my vambraces."

"You should just be thankful that I do not have one of those folded crossbows that you hate so much," Rhavaniel said, an answering smile curling her lips. Belhadron snorted, and then the next few minutes became a light argument over the merits of folded crossbows, as they rode through the bare winter woods.

They rode for most of the day, only stopping briefly to eat. Belhadron raised one eyebrow as he watched the food quickly disappear. "I had a younger brother," he said when Rhavaniel looked questioningly at him. "What's your excuse?"

Rhavaniel swallowed her mouthful, and then laughed. "You forget," she replied. "I was a ward of the realm for most of my childhood. It was a running game between us, to see who could take each other's food at mealtimes. You ate quickly, or you didn't eat."

Belhadron snorted in amusement. "I didn't even know that happened," he said. "But then I've never had much to do with the wards."

Rhavaniel shrugged. "Neither have I for a while, except for recruitment purposes. Sometimes the best spies come from those children, especially if the good ones are spotted and nudged in the right direction. After all, I was a ward of the realm for nearly thirty years." It was then, living in the stronghold with the rest of the children who had nowhere else to go, that she had learnt the basics of her trade, even if she hadn't known it then.

They'd been taught to fight, if only because there was little else for them to do apart from their studies and they were living amongst warriors and captains in the stronghold, but far more importantly for her, she had learnt how to watch and listen, how to hide in the middle of a crowd and disappear in the shadows at the edges of rooms. And when she'd been given the offer of joining them, of wearing that grey cloak and becoming one of the King's spies, it hadn't been a hard choice.

"I don't know if I've ever asked," Belhadron mused, shifting into a more comfortable position as he picked at a hunk of bread in his hands. "Why didn't the rest of your family take you in? You're obviously on good enough terms with them; I've stayed with your aunt and uncle quite a few times now, and they're good people, even if your grandmother scares me."

Rhavaniel laughed. "We're on good terms now," she explained. "We weren't when my parents died. I was too young to know much, but I pieced it together later on. Besides, none of them could have taken a child at the time, and I didn't particularly want to go with them. Being taken in as a ward was the best option for everyone." She looked over at Belhadron. "Don't look so sad," she protested with a wry smile at his expression. "You get the same sad face whenever I talk about what happened. I had a decent childhood. I turned out well enough."

Belhadron snorted. "That's a matter of opinion," he replied, and then cursed as Rhavaniel's piece of bread hit him squarely in the face.

They rode on through the woods. The sun began to disappear behind grey clouds creeping in from the north as the day drew on, and Belhadron watched them with a slightly worried eye. He didn't hope for anything; he'd learnt long ago that the weather wouldn't change on his whims, but he still huffed a sigh when the clouds finally made good on what they'd been threatening, and a light rain began to fall.

In the middle of winter, there was no cover for them, and all they could do was quicken their pace and pull up the hoods of their cloaks. Rhavaniel supressed a shiver as a droplet of rain slithered down her neck, and she tugged the cloak tighter around her shoulders as they rode on through woods looking less and less inviting as the day slowly crawled past and the sun reached once again for the cover of the horizon.

 _So Belhadron's parents turn up in the next chapter (unnamed, because I don't name original characters unless I want them to become a huge part of the story, for complicated reasons) and it all gets a little tense between everyone. This is not going to be happy all the time. Rhavaniel is badly wounded, and she is a long way from recovering. Belhadron is also not okay, though he's trying really hard to be, and it all will come to a head in a massive argument between the two of them in a few chapter's time._

 _The bit about Rhavaniel eating quickly is a nod to my mum- her parents lived in India, so she went to a boarding school here in England, and they only had about fifteen minutes to get their food and eat, so she learnt to eat very quickly. It was similar for my dad, so as a family we now eat stupidly quickly, because both me and my sister have picked up on the habit. Also, Rhavaniel is riding with a saddle because of her injury- it's way more comfortable in a saddle than riding bareback. Normally, wood elves ride without any tack (in my head)._

 _This whole story is about 30k long, so we're looking at something like seven chapters, maybe less? I'm still going to stick to publishing once a week at the moment, because life has gone a little hectic and I'm not writing as quickly as I would like, but we shall see how things go._

 _As always, reviews are very welcome. I'll see you all next Saturday!_


	4. 3: Light in the Fountain (Part Two)

**We Can Make It If We Run**

 **Chapter 3: Lights in the Fountain**

 **Part Two**

 _Okay, so a few things that I've got to say before we can get to the story. Firstly, I am not a doctor and have no medical expertise beyond having watched a lot of House. I'm assuming that warm water would act to increase circulation, which is a good thing (you'll see what I mean in this chapter). I may be wrong about this, so take any medical parts in this story with a pinch of salt. It's fantasy, people, it's fine._

 _Secondly, apologies if this is late for you! I was out babysitting and couldn't find the wifi code, so only just got internet back. And thirdly, the discussion that happens between Belhadron's parents, Belhadron and Rhavaniel is slightly based on the discussions that can happen around my family dinner table. My dad and my sister will occasionally launch into heated discussions over politics/current events, whilst my mum and I sit there and try to mediate so nobody ends up shouting too loudly or saying something stupid. It's quite a hard thing to do- normally I just don't say anything and let them run their course. So whilst my parents are definitely not as estranged from me as Belhadron's parents are from him, the discussion/argument in this chapter is based a little on my family._

 _As always, reviews are very welcome._

 _0-o-0-o-0_

It was dark, the rain still falling, when they finally reached Belhadron's family home. Belhadron rode straight into the courtyard and all the way up to the front door, which was flung open at the sound of hooves outside. Warm light spilt out from the doorway, and Rhavaniel winced at the sudden brightness.

Belhadron quickly vaulted from his mare and moved to Rhavaniel, reaching up to offer her a hand. Rhavaniel, who was now shivering constantly and swaying slightly with each throb of pain from her arm, took the hand and let him catch her as she slid from her horse. She stumbled slightly as her arm was jarred, and Belhadron wrapped a solid arm around her waist for a few moments, supporting her until her feet came underneath her. It was only once she shook him off, turning to her gelding to get the first of their bags, that Belhadron then turned to the figure silhouetted in the light from the doorway.

"Mother," he said in greetings, and allowed himself to be pulled forwards into a brief embrace. "How are you?"

"I think it is more apt for me to ask you that," Belhadron's mother replied, standing back and looking up at her son. Rhavaniel stepped forwards with a bag over her shoulder, and Belhadron's mother greeted her with a kiss to the cheek. "Come inside, dear, you're soaked through," she said. "Your father will deal with the horses," she continued, looking over to Belhadron. "Come inside before I pull you in by force."

A fire was burning in the hearth inside, and Rhavaniel stopped in front of it to see if the flames could push out the chill that seemed to have settled into her bones. She almost jumped when Belhadron's hand landed on her shoulder, and Belhadron noticed. He didn't say anything at first, merely untying first his cloak, and then Rhavaniel's, and hanging them in front of the fire.

"How is your arm?" he asked abruptly as Rhavaniel shivered again, her teeth clenched to prevent any sound slipping past her lips. "Can I look at it?"

"Because you have such comprehensive healing knowledge," Rhavaniel muttered. She saw Belhadron's expression crumple slightly, and she sighed. "Sorry, that was unfair," she said softly. She gripped his shoulder in apology, and shrugged out of her sling. "Have a look at it. You've been paying enough attention to the healers for the past month or so to know what you're looking for."

Belhadron huffed a soft laugh, and Rhavaniel relaxed, knowing it meant he'd accepted her apology. He gently took her arm and began to undo the bandages. "Your arm is freezing," he muttered as he turned it over, checking the scabs now healing into scars, the cobweb of red raised lines that cut deep into her flesh, ever so slowly fading into white. "I'm going to assume that it's not good for it to be this cold, so we should probably do something about that."

Rhavaniel watched, slightly apprehensive, as Belhadron heated a kettle over the fire and filled a large, shallow bowl with water. He seemed slightly out of place in the house, having to turn to his mother to ask where she'd put the spare linen or the bowl he needed, and Rhavaniel found herself wondering how long it had been since he'd last returned home.

His mother sat at the other side of the table as Rhavaniel sat, and gingerly placed her arm in the warm water. At the sudden heat she nearly whimpered, her arm screaming in pain. Belhadron grabbed her shoulder, his fingers digging into her and keeping her from curling up over the bowl of water. "I know," he murmured. "I know it's painful, but it's the better option."

"Obviously," Rhavaniel muttered through gritted teeth. Belhadron merely snorted in amusement, and steadied the bowl of water as Rhavaniel's arm hand spasmed and shook.

Rhavaniel bit back another moan as pain clawed up from her hand to her chest, her hair falling across her face as she bit her lip, and Belhadron took his hand from her shoulder to offer it to her, palm out, on the table. Rhavaniel paused, and then reached for his hand, gripping it tightly enough for his fingers to turn white. He didn't say anything, just took her hand and gripped it back until the worst of the pain had passed. Finally she slumped down into a chair, resting her arm in the water, and let go of Belhadron's hand.

"I still have all my fingers," he said with a wry grin as he flexed them. "Don't worry about it."

Rhavaniel hissed a laugh through her teeth, gingerly stretching out her fingers, and then curling them as much as she could. Her fourth and fifth fingers barely straightened, and then only curled a little. Rhavaniel frowned at them in displeasure. It would be a lot easier if she could just will her broken and twisted body to do what she wanted it to do, regardless of the damage deep within.

Belhadron's father came inside, shaking the droplets of rain from his cloak, and for the next little while the room was filled with talk, harmless talk between Belhadron and his parents of the news he had missed since he'd last visited, the idle gossip that sprung up out of the barest whispers, wells in what looked like dry land to one who didn't know the terrain. Rhavaniel stayed seated at the table, slowly clenching and unclenching her hand, and she watched, and she listened.

Belhadron was at ease with them, on the surface, but she didn't miss how he tensed slightly when his mother occasionally paused, waiting for a different type of question to the one she would eventually ask each time. She didn't miss how his father hovered, not quite sure how best to talk to his own son. Rhavaniel wondered whether she would have been like this, with her parents. But then she'd never had any siblings to lose, and her parents had understood the necessity of sacrifice.

Belhadron's hand brushed hers, and Rhavaniel looked over at him, leaning back in the chair next to her, his other hand idly flipping his short knife between his fingers. She was almost sure he was doing that on purpose, to antagonise his parents or provoke them into speaking what she and Belhadron could both see they were thinking, beneath the small talk and gazes that pointedly avoided her ruined arm.

Dinner was put on the table, and Rhavaniel resigned herself to eating far slower than usual, her left hand unused to doing everything and her right barely able to hold a knife. Belhadron arched an eyebrow at her, but didn't offer to help until she nodded with a resigned sigh, and then he leant over with his own knife.

"How did that happen?" asked Belhadron's father, sat opposite her and toying with his cutlery. Rhavaniel knew, of course, what he was talking about. Beside her, she saw Belhadron tense out of the corner of her eye.

"I was in the wrong place, at the wrong time," she replied simply. "When the tide of the battle turned, I was close to the middle of the valley, in the midst of the fighting, and I was caught in the riptide." Belhadron's parents offered murmured condolences, and Rhavaniel nodded in thanks. "There's little I can do about it now. I am lucky, compared to others."

Belhadron's jaw worked, and his head briefly bowed. "Do you remember Thenidon?" he asked his parents. "One of the other captains. He stayed here once, when he was travelling up north and the weather became too bad to ride. It was only about a century ago, I think."

His mother nodded first. "Yes," she mused. "He has a wife, doesn't he?"

"Had," Belhadron said, his voice falling flat in the room. "He died outside Erebor."

"I'm sorry to hear that," his father replied smoothly, a frown creasing his brow. He paused, weighing his next words. "How many were lost?"

Both Rhavaniel and Belhadron paused, looking at each other for a moment. "Surely you have seen the official statement?" Belhadron asked. "We wrote it pretty much as soon as we got back and took stock of everything, and it was sent out three weeks ago, including the number of the dead. _Adar_ , you must have read it."

"We've read it, and heard it from others as well," his mother replied. "But you and I both know that those statements are little more than a carefully written front. What actually happened?"

Belhadron sighed, and then began to tell a brief tale of what had happened since they'd left the realm. Rhavaniel mostly stayed silent, only filling in when Belhadron's knowledge didn't extend to the larger situation. For the most part she watched his parents, cataloguing their reactions to each event as Belhadron told them. They didn't like the fact that Thranduil had marched to Erebor in the first place, and their dislike of his actions only seemed to deepen, if Rhavaniel was reading them correctly, as Belhadron recounted their alliance with Bard, the siege of Erebor.

His mother caught Rhavaniel's gaze a few times, but Rhavaniel had been playing the game for a very long time, and it was second nature to her now to curtail her expression, make it look as if she was only paying a little attention to them. She flexed her hand, the ruined fingers twitching, and winced slightly at the throb of pain that it caused.

Belhadron finally trailed off, skipping quickly over the aftermath of the battle and the journey home. He slipped his hands into his lap, and Rhavaniel quietly reached for one, squeezing it in reassurance. She was lucky, in that her memories of the aftermath of the battle had been left foggy and muted by pain and fever. Belhadron had been mostly unharmed.

"Were you hurt?" his father asked abruptly, his gaze fixed on his son. Belhadron shrugged slightly, the barest of wry smiles tugging at his lips.

"A little," he replied. "But then I don't think anyone walked away totally unharmed. When I was hunting down some of the orcs with Legolas and our impromptu company I was knocked out, but only for a few minutes." He shrugged again. "Wrong place at the wrong time. It just happened to be a better time and place than Rhavaniel's."

Rhavaniel huffed a laugh at that, which put a real smile on Belhadron's face for a few moments. His mother studied Rhavaniel for a second, before her gaze flickered away. "So why did the King ride for Erebor in the first place, if he was not intending to head for Esgaroth when you set out?"

Belhadron shook his head, his fork toying slightly with the food on his plate. "We thought the Dwarves were dead. I cannot speak for Thranduil's motivations, but Legolas did think, when I asked, that it was more than just treasure."

"And that marched you straight into trouble," his mother replied. "The King should have stayed out of it."

"We all knew there was something more," Rhavaniel said quietly, clumsily tearing off a piece of bread with one hand and popping it in her mouth. "We could all see the clouds gathering. I don't think that any of us were unaware of the risks we were taking."

"Maybe so, but you still didn't know that the orcs would be coming," Belhadron's father pointed out. "And that cost lives."

"You do not need to remind us of that," Belhadron shot back quickly, his voice slowly growing colder. "We were there. We saw it happen."

His mother frowned, watching her son from across the table with surprisingly sharp eyes. Rhavaniel watched Belhadron out of the corner of her eye, and she subtly pressed her leg against his, a wordless reassurance and a message to not get annoyed too quickly and say something that went too far. After a few seconds Belhadron's mother sat back.

"Regardless," she said. "I think it's a little worrying how involved the King seems to be in outside affairs. This strengthened alliance with Esgaroth is bad enough, but the Dwarves as well? That is worrying."

Belhadron raised one eyebrow, and Rhavaniel felt inclined to copy the slightly incredulous look on his face, even if she didn't and remained quiet, watching carefully. "That alliance is with Bard, not Esgaroth," Belhadron pointed out. "And will be with Dale once it is rebuilt. And we had a cordial enough relationship with the Dwarves before Smaug came anyway. This alliance will strengthen the eastern areas of Rhovanion considerably, and by that extent, our own realm."

His father shook his head. "Why should we get involved?" he asked. "We do not owe anything to this Bowman. For centuries we have looked after our own affairs before looking to any other realm. We should not suddenly change that because a dragon is dead."

"I do not know how old you are, Rhavaniel," Belhadron's mother said. "But you cannot be old enough to remember the years after the Last Alliance, am I correct?" Rhavaniel dipped her head in a nod.

"Neither are you," Belhadron pointed out.

"My mother was, and most of her family," his mother replied smoothly. "And they returned from war with two thirds of the army, their friends, dead. That is what happened the last time we got involved in things outside of our own realm. And I'm not saying we shouldn't have been involved then, but perhaps we could remember the lesson we learnt from that. We protect what is ours before looking to help others protect theirs."

"Forces beyond our realm are moving," Rhavaniel said softly. "If we do not look beyond our borders, then how can we be ready when they strike?"

"And will they strike?"

Rhavaniel tilted her head, and shrugged slightly. "Ask some, and they would say they already did. But what happened outside Erebor was merely the beginning."

"That is what we all think," Belhadron added. "From all the information we've been gathering, from all that we have seen, we think that we have only just started. More will come before this Age ends."

"But still, becoming so involved could be damaging to us," Belhadron's mother pressed. "We should be concerned over our affairs, our problems. You don't see the problem here, Belhadron. The system is already damaged. It doesn't work, not perfectly-"

"Which you would of course know, because you have been so involved with it for the past centuries," Belhadron snapped, eyes narrowed. "You don't know how it works anymore. You've been out for too long."

"We still have friends," his father interjected. "And we listen. The point your mother would have made, if you hadn't interrupted her, is that the system does not work perfectly, and forcing us, forcing you and your companies and some of our strength to look out beyond our own interests and our own values that need protecting, that could damage it further, to the point where we are weakened."

Belhadron scoffed. "And if we hide behind our borders, the world might fall to ruin around us without us even noticing!"

"You're being dramatic," Belhadron's mother said sternly. "We may have been out of the system for a long time now, but we still know how it works. And the world will not fall to ruin if we focus on protecting ourselves first."

"Won't it?" Belhadron bit out, a cold edge to his voice. "We've been blind to plenty of things before, and they will come back to catch us sooner or later."

"Events in Gondor or Eriador do not concern us," his father said, resting his arms on the table. "They have not concerned us for thousands of years."

Belhadron, judging from the way he suddenly bit his cheek, was holding back a curse. He put his fork down with a clatter. "Not everything is hundreds of miles away. There's so much that you don't know, or that you can't understand because _you're not there_. You don't see the grim picture we have to keep a handle on, because nobody else can do that job. So you can't say anything to us, anything at all, about what we need to do. You don't know. You aren't there."

"We are a larger part of the world," Rhavaniel added. "Whether we want to be or not."

His parents still looked sceptical, as if they didn't quite want to believe him, and Belhadron pushed his plate away with a shove. It clattered across the table. Rhavaniel reached out and caught the knife before it rolled off the side and fell to the floor.

"You have _no idea_ what we do, or what we know," Belhadron hissed. "Do you even know who the Nec-"

Rhavaniel cut him off with a hand on his arm. "Not the time, or the place," she murmured, her voice stern even though it was only a little more than a whisper. "Also, that one is a state secret."

Belhadron looked like he was going to argue for a moment, but then ducked his head in a short nod. For the rest of the dinner he hardly said anything, and even Rhavaniel's well-skilled diplomacy only just kept a conversation going. Beneath the table Belhadron's hands were shaking slightly, his gaze becoming just a little distant, and Rhavaniel watched carefully until he let out a breath, and slipped his hand into hers.

0-o-0-o-0

Rhavaniel paused, listening. She was in her room for the night, attempting to get undressed with only one functioning hand, but even in the relative safety of this house, even injured and near useless, she could not help but be alert. Some part of her was always scanning for the next danger, the next threat, and the voices in the kitchen had caught her attention.

She heard Belhadron's mother first. "It's such a shame, what happened to Rhavaniel," she said amongst the clatter of plates on the side. "Will she step down from her position as captain?"

There was a pause, and then Belhadron's low voice. "I don't know if she has thought about it," he replied. "We haven't talked about it yet. I don't think she would want to give up her captaincy, but I suppose we'll have to wait and see how well her arm heals."

"And what about you?"

Rhavaniel winced slightly at the steel tone in Belhadron's mother's voice. There was the sound of clattering plates again, and then Belhadron answered.

"I don't know what you mean," he said slowly.

"You know exactly what I mean," his mother replied. "I've seen that look on other's faces before. For how much longer are you going to let the system, let the King, take pieces of you that you won't ever get back?"

"You have no idea what you're talking about," Belhadron snapped. "I'm not losing anything."

"You could get out," his mother said, the faintest bit of pleading in her voice. "You could walk away. Haven't you given enough? Haven't you given far too much already? After everything you've just been through, there would be no shame in walking away."

"No," Belhadron said firmly. "Not for anything. I could never abandon Legolas like that."

Rhavaniel heard a sigh from his mother. "That Prince," she muttered. There was a pause. "You do know that you don't owe him anything at all?"

There was a sharp clash, as if Belhadron had slammed a plate down. "I owe him everything," he replied sharply. "He has saved my life in more ways than you could know. I've done the same for him. He is my commander, my friend, my brother in all but blood." For a moment, Rhavaniel thought he would add family to that description, like he did when talking to others about Legolas and her and the other captains, but that blow would be too harsh, and Belhadron had enough sense to refrain from adding that final word.

"And one day," his mother snapped in reply, her voice growing heated. "One day, that Prince will be the death of you."

Belhadron went silent for a long pause. Rhavaniel could imagine how he looked, the rare moments when his hot temper froze into ice and he stilled, furious.

"You are so blinded by your loyalty to that Prince that you'd follow him straight to your own death," his mother said, anger and desperation and contempt in her voice. "And the worst thing about it is that for him, you would walk into it gladly."

Rhavaniel openly winced, and then darted back to grab a handful of supplies from her bag in the room. She pushed the door open, loudly enough that they would hear it, and walked into the kitchen.

Belhadron was standing by the window, purposefully not looking at his mother as she watched him. They both turned around as she entered, and she held up the bandages and salve in her hand.

"I can't wrap a bandage on myself with only one good hand," she said, a wry smile on her face that fell soft as she saw the raw edges Belhadron was trying so hard to hide.

Belhadron swallowed, and then nodded. "Sit by the fire, so I can see what I'm doing," he said. Rhavaniel, for a moment, was impressed with how steady his voice was. She took a seat at the end of the table near the fire, her ruined arm resting out in front of her. In the orange light, the shiny red skin of the slowly healing wounds flickered, light dancing across the cobweb of scars.

Belhadron sat opposite her, reaching for the supplies she'd dumped on the table. His mother hovered, for a moment. "Do you need anything else for it?" she asked, nodding at Rhavaniel's arm.

Rhavaniel shook her head, when it became apparent that Belhadron wasn't going to answer. "Thank you, but we have all the supplies for tending to it," she replied. His mother nodded, and then left the room. Belhadron let out a breath.

"I take it you heard all that," he said, head bent low over her arm as he checked each wound, fingers light across the ruined skin. Rhavaniel nodded.

"I'm sorry," she offered. Belhadron huffed a laugh, and scooped some of the salve from the pot. He began to spread it over her arm and hand.

"It's nothing I haven't heard before," he replied. "But thank you."

"They can't see it in the same way anymore."

Belhadron looked up, eyebrows raised, and Rhavaniel elaborated. "Your parents," she said. "I think they became disillusioned with the system, as they call it, a long time ago, and they can no longer see it the way that we do. They resent the system for taking you away from them, for taking your brother even more permanently, and then because you are part of the system, they find themselves resenting you for it. And then of course you resent them back, and it all goes round and round." She shrugged, careful not to jolt her arm. "I think sometimes they feel they lost two sons, instead of just the one."

Belhadron stiffened. "As perceptive as always," he muttered, smoothing the last of the salve into her skin before reaching for the bandages. Rhavaniel studied him.

"I may be injured and useless, but I still know you," she said softly. "Do you want to get out?"

"No," Belhadron said shortly, pulling on the bandages around Rhavaniel's arm. Rhavaniel flexed her fingers as well as she could, the pain throbbing up to her elbow.

"Let me rephrase that," she said coolly. "Do you ever think about getting out?"

"No," Belhadron repeated again, his face shadowed where he turned away from the fire to best see Rhavaniel's arm in the light. Rhavaniel huffed a brief laugh.

"You're lying," she said easily. "I can tell that easily enough."

Belhadron looked up, catching her gaze. "What about you?" he asked. "Do you ever think about getting out?"

Rhavaniel shook her head. "No," she said. "I don't."

Belhadron looked at her for a long moment, and then suddenly laughed bitterly, the sound falling flat in the room. "You know, it's funny," he said. "I can't actually tell if you are lying or not."

Rhavaniel arched an eyebrow as Belhadron laughed bitterly again. "You know everything about me," he said. "You know exactly how to talk me down from nightmares, how to stop me getting angry enough to lose my temper. Out of everyone, only Legolas knows me better than you."

"Yes, I get your point," Rhavaniel said, trying not to snap at him. "I know you very well. What is your actual point?"

Belhadron gritted his teeth. "My actual point is that I can't tell if you're lying. I can't tell if you are coping or not. And sometimes I feel like you know everything about me, when I hardly know you at all."

He finished the bandage, tying it off at Rhavaniel's elbow, and stood up. His chair scraped against the stone floor with a screech. "We'll leave in the morning," he said abruptly. "Good night."

Rhavaniel watched him leave, stalking out through the kitchen door. She wondered if his parents had heard their argument, if it could be called that. She hoped that they hadn't, if only to stop them having more they could use against their son to try and keep him safe. Her arm throbbed, and she resisted itching it, just like she'd done for the past month now, ever since she'd come back home from Erebor with a ruined arm, a hollow ache in her chest and the feeling that the path had suddenly disappeared from beneath her feet.

 _So, the beginning of the angst. This is setting up for a big argument that's coming later, so you've got that to look forwards to! I'm working on other parts of this sequel now- Elladan and Elrohir, and Gandalf, in two separate oneshots. I'm also pretty excited because I'm going to go see Star Trek: Beyond tomorrow, which should be great fun!_

 _Next week might be a little interesting- I'm away competing with my horse on Saturday, so we shall have to see what happens with regards to wifi, but I will try my best to put up the next chapter._

 _As always, reviews are very welcome._


	5. 4: Lights in the Fountain (Part Three)

**We Can Make It If We Run**

 **Chapter Four: Lights in the Fountain**

 **Part Three**

 _Firstly, I am very sorry that I was unable to publish a chapter last Saturday. I know that I promised to update weekly, which in hindsight wasn't a great idea, but things happened and I wasn't able to make it to my laptop. I know it's frustrating and annoying when an author misses an update, but please remember that we all have lives outside of our fandoms, and sometimes things get in the way._

 _In regards to why I wasn't able to update, I was actually out competing with my horse- I'd been invited to ride in Under18 National Championships, so was away from Wednesday last week to Monday this week, and then slept through most of Tuesday, and was with extended family for the rest of the week. I've literally only just gotten to my laptop, though I've managed to be online a bit through my phone. On top of that, all of the stress and exhaustion from the championships has left my brain completely fried, and I am forgetting absolutely everything._ _I did have a great time at the championships though, even with all of the rain and the fact that it was a seven hour drive away (we left at 6pm on Sunday, got back very early Monday morning at 1:30am, and then I had to deal with the horse before I could do anything else, like sleep)._

 _I hope this next bit makes it up to anyone who was really disappointed by not having a chapter last week (I've also taken the promise bit out of the chapter description, in case something like this happens again). There's the regular chapter today, and then to make up for missing last week, **there'll be another chapter tomorrow**. Today's chapter is shorter than usual (it would have been anyway) because of the way the story is written, but there'll be angsty bits tomorrow!_

 _I'm sorry for no chapter last week, and I hope you enjoy this one. As always, reviews are very welcome._

 _0-o-0-o-0_

They left his parents' house in the morning. Belhadron embraced his parents goodbye, though he said little and seemed to almost burn with defiance, silently daring his parents to say something more. Rhavaniel didn't say anything, didn't offer a reassuring glance or a soft smile to Belhadron as they readied the horses. Her arm throbbed in time with her heartbeat, and her mind was caught up in the fog that was slowly becoming more familiar.

They rode off together, in an uneasy silence, and Rhavaniel turned the past day, Belhadron's words to her and hers to him, over and over in her mind as they passed under bare branches and grey skies.

It took them another day of riding to reach the large settlement where Rhavaniel's family lived. They rode in under a twisting archway of trees, and Belhadron found himself wishing that they were visiting in summer, when the archway was a thousand shade of greens, or even in spring, when the grass under their horses' hooves was littered with soft petals, and the heady scent of blossom was in the air. Now the branches were bare, lichen clinging to them in yet more shades of grey.

The village was spread out before them, a myriad of paths running from the central green. Small houses were nestled in amongst the trees, with talans high up above the forest floor above them. There was a fountain in the middle of the green, and a child was sitting on the edge of the stone, playing with sticks. When they rode in he stood and ran off, but it was in excitement, not in fear, and Belhadron could hear his high ringing voice as he disappeared into the meandering paths of the village.

Rhavaniel murmured something under her breath and then pushed her horse forwards, riding into the green. Two elves were walking across the green from the fountain, buckets in their hands. As Belhadron pushed his mare forwards and caught up with Rhavaniel, the two elves looked up and saw them. They smiled in greetings, and both bowed their heads to Rhavaniel and Belhadron as they rode past.

"Welcome home, captains," one called out after them. Belhadron looked back abruptly over his shoulder, but the two elves had already turned away and were walking back through the village.

Belhadron spent the entire ride through the village, as they left the green to head down one of the paths, past small shops and houses and stables, trying not to stare at the people that they rode past. He couldn't work out what it was that caught his attention, but he caught himself staring at them almost hungrily as they walked past, doing whatever they did with their lives.

They finally reached a large house, off to the east of the green. Talans stretched above their heads, and in the dim light of the dusk that was fast approaching, small lanterns were bright amongst the dark boughs of the trees. Warm light spilled from the windows, and then the door was flung open.

Belhadron hung back, unpacking their bags, as Rhavaniel was engulfed by her family. There were too many for him to bother counting, her aunt and uncle and young cousins, along with friends who were visiting, and they all surrounded her with laughs and exclamations as one after another, they pulled her into fierce embraces.

Belhadron suddenly realised why he'd been watching every elf he'd seen in this village so intently, why he felt uneasy, standing at the edge of the light spilling from the house. He hadn't seen anyone in the past six weeks who didn't look like they were one sharp tap away from shattering, and he wasn't sure if what he felt now, watching Rhavaniel's family and their friends, was envy or just grief.

Rhavaniel turned back to him, a smile on her face as her young cousin hung from her good arm, and Belhadron briefly felt a swift stab of jealousy, before he buried it beneath layers of anger and regret. He couldn't remember the last time he'd smiled like that because of his family. And after what he'd said to Rhavaniel yesterday evening, a small nasty voice in the back of his head said he didn't deserve that smile.

Rhavaniel's uncle, an elf with flour constantly down his shirt from their bakery, saw Belhadron and pulled him over into the group with a smile and a polite question on his lips about their journey. Belhadron forced a grin onto his face, and for a few minutes they stood outside, the light of the fire that was spilling out the front door as they talked in soft voices fading into the quickly gathering night.

0-o-0-o-0

With afire roaring merrily in the hearth, they sat around the large table in front of the fire to eat. Rhavaniel rested her arm on the table, flexing the fingers as she messed with the bandages a little. Belhadron started for her, as if he meant to help, but sat back a moment later. Rhavaniel's uncle caught him in conversation over the recent happenings in the realm, nothing too close to the story of Erebor, which would wait until Rhavaniel's grandmother came back from an errand she'd had to run, and Belhadron let himself be distracted by the idle talk and the cheerful voices around him.

It felt so discordant. He suspected Rhavaniel felt the same, from her tired gaze and soft voice, but he couldn't tell. He couldn't even tell if she was coping with everything that had happened or not. He could guess that she wasn't, as he wasn't either, and he had been lucky, but he didn't know what to do, how to help, and it was like he couldn't get enough air into his lungs to do anything but whisper.

There were soft footsteps at the door, and then it was pushed open, a gust of chill air sweeping through the room. Belhadron tried not to shiver at the figure in the doorway, silver hair glinting in the firelight, old and sharp eyes alighting instantly on him and Rhavaniel. He'd always been scared of Rhavaniel's grandmother.

In the next moment she smiled, and shut the door behind her. "My dear," she said, heading for Rhavaniel and pulling her into embrace. "Let me look at you."

Rhavaniel stood still, a wry smile tugging at the corner of her lips, as her grandmother looked her up and down. Belhadron watched nervously, and then tried not to jump when her gaze suddenly cut to him. "Come here, child," she said, holding out one hand. He got up from the table, coming to stand in the firelight.

She looked him up and down, studying his face with pursed lips. "You've been through the wars," she said softly. "Both of you." Belhadron glanced back at Rhavaniel, whose gaze flickered away, and then nodded slightly. Her grandmother nodded.

"Sit down, then," she said with a sharp tone but a kind enough smile. "Both of you could do with more to eat." Belhadron sagged back into his seat, and Rhavaniel's grandmother sat at the other end of the table. For the dinner the conversation stayed light, and though more than a few glances were directed at Rhavaniel's arm as she rested it on the table, nobody asked anything.

Eventually the table was cleared, and the various cousins and friends left for their own homes with a final farewell and smile to Rhavaniel and Belhadron. Belhadron got up to help with the clearing up, but was instantly waved down by Rhavaniel's grandmother. Rhavaniel huffed the barest of laughs, before she turned back to fiddling with the bandages tight around her arm.

"So," Rhavaniel's grandmother said as she stacked plates. The tone was loaded, and both Rhavaniel and Belhadron looked up, but her face was kind as she passed the plate across to Rhavaniel's uncle, at the sink. She slid into a seat at the table, watching both of them keenly.

"What is it?" Rhavaniel asked, gaze flicking to her aunt and uncle as they turned and leant against the side next to the sink. Her grandmother smiled sharply.

"We would like to know what happened," she said after another moment of studying the two of them. "But I know your parents, Belhadron, and can only assume that there have been discussions in the past day that you probably did not enjoy. So you do not have to recount it again, if you do not want to."

Belhadron shifted uneasily. Next to him, Rhavaniel had gone still. She glanced at him, well aware, that he was thinking of his parents. She went to nudge him, a soft reassurance, but Belhadron flinched away from her and she stilled again.

"None of us here will judge you for whatever happened," Rhavaniel's uncle said, his voice easy. "We will have our own opinions, of course, but we know we cannot comment with too much zeal, not when all of us have been apart from the stronghold and the workings of the realm for so long. Your parents, from what you've told us before, will not have been so refrained."

Belhadron huffed a wry laugh. "You would be correct," he replied. Rhavaniel's family knew about his parents and his uneasy relationship with them. He'd stayed here many times before, enough that he sometimes felt like he knew Rhavaniel's family better than his own. He glanced at Rhavaniel, who nodded, though her face was unreadable. With a sigh, she began.

Rhavaniel stayed silent for the most part, listening once again. When Belhadron trailed off she took over, her voice quiet in the room. Finally, between them, they finished. Belhadron sat back, watching and waiting for their reaction.

Rhavaniel's grandmother pursed her lips, and nodded. "Well, that's that," she said decisively. "How long can you stay?"

Belhadron blinked. "Two or so weeks," he said eventually. "Legolas gave me leave to stay for longer, but we both have duties we need to return to before long."

"There's still so much to do," Rhavaniel added. "It's only been a month until we returned home, and we still don't have enough elves in the standing companies, not yet. And though the east is safer, a lot of the southern woods haven't realised that yet."

"We don't need to talk jobs tonight," Rhavaniel's aunt said with a smile. "If you don't want to. There's plenty else that has happened in the world." Rhavaniel ducked her head in a short nod, and her aunt smiled. She turned to Belhadron.

"I meant to ask," she said. "How much do you know about alloys? I've been working on something in the forge, but I can't quite get the blades right."

Belhadron frowned, and then thought about it for a moment. Next to him, Rhavaniel fell into conversation with her uncle and grandmother, lilting voices amongst the crackling of the fire. He listened to her voice for a moment, listening for any sign that she wasn't coping, but gave up after only a few moments. The amount that he was worrying, he wouldn't put it past himself to hear something in her voice that wasn't really there, just so that he could think that he did know her well enough to tell.

Rhavaniel's aunt was still looking at him expectantly. Belhadron went to apologise, but she spoke first, cutting in quickly. "I was thinking that I might be getting the cooling process of the metal wrong," she said. "Seeing as it's a new alloy. Is that something you've ever seen?"

Belhadron knew exactly what she was doing, but he didn't bother to say anything. He shrugged. "We mostly deal with the same metals for our weapons," he replied. "But I have heard of blades shattering when being cooled, when our smiths are experimenting. It is possible. Have you tried cooling it more gradually?"

Rhavaniel's aunt levelled him with a look. "I've been doing this for a while," she said, even as a grin threatened to overtake her face. "I've tried. I might just be wrong with this alloy."

"I can take a look at it, if you want," Belhadron offered. "I'm no blacksmith, but I know my way around a blade. It's not as if I'll be too busy here."

"Excellent," the aunt said with a smile. "I can get you to test out the balance on a few things as well. Do you work much with the smiths back home?"

"When they let us," Belhadron replied with a short laugh. "They get irritated by us easily, because whenever they have something new that they've put a huge amount of effort into making, we take it to test it out, and then promptly break it within a few days."

Rhavaniel's aunt pointed a spoon at him with a mock glare. "Do not break my works!" she exclaimed. "Or I'll keep you here until you fix it all."

Belhadron laughed. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Rhavaniel start and turn for him, before stopping herself, and going back to the conversation she'd been having with her uncle and grandmother. "You'll have to argue with Legolas over that one," he replied with a wry smile that was probably good enough for them not to notice it was forced.

His gaze fell distant, though he listened still to Rhavaniel's aunt as she talked, nodding along and offering a few brief attempts at a conversation.

Rhavaniel would have noticed the inattention, the forced smile, if she had been looking. She knew him; he'd long since dropped any acts with her because she saw past them anyway. It was her job, after all, to look past defences and sidle around barriers without anyone noticing until it was too late. Belhadron knew Rhavaniel could read him easily, but it had never bothered him, because he had assumed it worked the other way. He had assumed that he knew her, perhaps better than anyone. Now he was not so sure, and he couldn't tell if it was anger or just grief that curled cold tendrils around his throat.

 _Rhavaniel's grandmother is one of those people who is actually a very nice person, but everyone is scared of them anyway. There's probably some story behind why Belhadron is scared of her in particular, but I don't have it in my head (if anyone has any ideas, I'm happy to hear them!)_

 _I know this chapter is short, but I just checked, and the next chapter is going to be pretty long at 5.2k (and pretty angsty) so there's that to look forwards to tomorrow! And again, I'm sorry that there was no chapter last Saturday, but real life became a little more important for a few days. I can't promise it won't happen again, because life is like that, but I will try to make sure it doesn't._

 _As always, reviews are very welcome. I'll see you on Sunday._


	6. 5: Lights in the Fountain (Part Four)

**We Can Make It If We Run**

 **Chapter Four: Lights in the Fountain**

 **Part Four**

 _So here's your extra chapter, to make up for missing last week. I'm slightly less tired today- slept in until 11am, which was nice, but I have to get back to my old routine tomorrow, as my week off is over. Which means that tomorrow morning I am up at 7 to go swimming (my mum has dragged me into this fitness routine which involves running, swimming and going to the gym, along with riding six times a week, and I am going to be so dead...)_

 _This chapter is longer than usual, but by the end of it I doubt you will be thanking me for it, as it is longer because I wanted to end the chapter on a cliffhanger! Well, it's not really a cliffhanger, but it's fairly evil still. There's nothing triggering, I don't think, but there's a pretty mean argument..._

 _I sent the second half of this chapter to my friend, and she promptly declared me evil for writing it, but she also loved it, so there's that._

 _I hope you enjoy it. As always, reviews are very welcome._

 _0-o-0-o-0_

Rhavaniel woke with pain throbbing up and down her arm. That itself was nothing new, but the weight of it all was a little stronger as she got up, padding out into the rest of the house to see where the smell of fresh bread was coming from. She cradled her arm against her chest, fiddling with the sling until she got too fed up with it and left it hanging around her neck.

She followed the smell of fresh bread to the bakery, where her grandmother was kneading dough on the floured table. From the loaves already out cooling, she'd been up for hours, even though it was not yet dawn. The bakery was her uncle's, but her grandmother did what she could to take up the time she now had on her hands.

She looked up as Rhavaniel came in. "There's another batch of dough that's proving," she said, pointing at the draw beneath the oven. "Get that out and knead it. I hope you haven't forgotten how."

Rhavaniel huffed. "I don't forget anything," she replied. "But I can't." She held up her ruined arm, the white bandages nearly the same colour as her pale skin as her sleeve slipped down. "I can barely move some of my fingers, let alone knead dough." The bitterness seeped into her tone, and she didn't bother hiding it. Her grandmother would have seen it no matter what efforts she'd made to hide it, and was one of the few people who could. Until just yesterday, she'd instantly included Belhadron in that number. Now, she was not so sure.

Her grandmother merely scoffed. "Don't be ridiculous," she said. "I know full well what you do in your training, my dear. You can kill an orc with a blindfold and one arm tied behind your back. I know, because I used to be able to do the same." She looked over at Rhavaniel, who held her gaze, and then nodded after a few seconds.

"If you can do that, then you can knead dough," her grandmother declared, and then she pushed the flour across the table to Rhavaniel, the discussion firmly over. Rhavaniel held back a sigh, and took out the bowl of dough.

For a while they worked in silence. Her grandmother shaped the dough with expert hands and then slid it into the oven, the blast of heat making Rhavaniel wince a little, and also want to stand as close as possible without getting burnt. She had enough of the cold outside Erebor in her dreams for her to crave the warmth whenever she could.

Her grandmother dumped a mixing bowl in front of her. "Do you remember how to make the spiced loaves?" she asked as she gathered various ingredients from around the bakery. She slid the bowl of spices across the table, the ones used to flavour the loaf, and suddenly Rhavaniel was assaulted with memories of a child standing on a stool at the edge of the table, her father standing behind her and helping her knead the dough and fold in the spices, holding her hand around the handle of the knife as they scored the top of the loaf before it went into the oven.

She didn't know where the memory had come from, but she could smell the spices and the bread as it came out of the oven, could hear the crackle of the crust as her eager hands tore at it. The spices had been expensive for them, and the bread had been a rare treat.

"Rhavaniel."

She jumped, and nearly grabbed the knife at the back of her belt before remembering where she was. Her grandmother arched a brow.

"Do you remember how to make the loaves or not?" she asked. Rhavaniel forced herself to lower her hand, letting go of the hilt of the knife, and nodded.

"Of course," she replied. She reached for the flour, and began.

She didn't know how long she was working, the dough sticking to her fingers and the spices bringing back a well of memories she thought that she'd lost, before she realised she was crying. Silent tears were rolling down her cheeks, dripping steadily onto the table.

Her grandmother came up beside her, pinching spices and adding them to her own dough. "I used to make this, when I was a child," Rhavaniel said, voice only just managing to remain steady, as she added a splash of milk to the second batch of dough in her bowl. Her right hand trembled as she tried to hold the bowl steady, the fourth and fifth fingers barely curling around the rim, though her left hand was still steady.

"Where do you think your mother learnt it from?" her grandmother asked with a smile. "It was something that my father passed onto me, and so on down the family. There's various stories of where the recipe came from that I've heard, but you know better than anyone how stories can change from mouth to mouth, so I doubt some of them are more than embellished rumours."

"Which one do you believe?" Rhavaniel asked as she shook spices into the bowl. She wiped at her face with her sleeve, drying the tear tracks still clinging to her cheeks. She'd heard all of the stories before, of course, but she was willing to go along if it meant not talking about what she knew her grandmother really wanted to talk about.

"Oh, there's little bits of truth in all of them," her grandmother replied. "But I do rather like the one where a family member stole the recipe from another family in Lothlorien at the beginning of the Second Age, because of a longstanding feud between them. It makes it seem like our family is much more adventurous than they really were."

Rhavaniel huffed a laugh, though the smile only just managed to tug at the corner of her lips. Her grandmother frowned, and her hands briefly paused in her work as she studied Rhavaniel.

Rhavaniel kept working at the dough, trying to brace the bowl with her ruined arm as she mixed the ingredients. Her grandmother leant against the table, dusting the flour off her hands.

"I've seen that look before," she said. "I've seen it quite a bit, over the thousands of years I've been around. I haven't seen it for a while, and you are doing a very good job at hiding it, but there's something about you that reminds me of those who walked back from the Last Alliance."

Rhavaniel paused, and tension coiled in her muscles, like a cat that was undecided whether to run away or strike.

"I was only a child then," her grandmother continued, sharp eyes studying Rhavaniel. "But I remember when they returned. And I remember watching them march past and wondering how we'd won, when our warriors had come back looking so broken."

Rhavaniel slammed her hand down, the tension simmering in her. "I am not _broken_ ," she hissed through clenched teeth. Her grandmother merely arched one brow and folded her arms across her chest.

"I don't think you are," she replied. "But you're lost, and you're terrified."

"I've been through a lot," Rhavaniel replied smoothly. "I am entitled to some time to work things out."

"Don't try and lie to me," her grandmother said, her voice stern. "I was one of your people before you were even born, and I know how to read a person, even one as closely guarded as you. You're terrified."

"Of course I am," Rhavaniel snapped. Her knuckles turned white where she gripped the edge of the table, but her ruined arm was near useless once again, the first few fingers only just curling around the wood, and she glared at it. Her grandmother just stood there, watching, and it was that sharp gaze that finally shattered the control Rhavaniel had been keeping such a fine tether on.

"You would honestly think I'd be anything but terrified?" she asked, her voice a sharp hiss and her eyes fey. "Look at what I've lost! Look at what I've given up! I am scared out of my mind, and I don't know what's going to happen anymore."

Her grandmother merely watched her, studying her intently like nobody had done for quite a while. Rhavaniel snarled under her breath.

"But at least I'm still alive, right?" she asked, her tone mocking and bitter. "At least I didn't die. At least I'm lucky." Her grandmother did nothing, merely stood there and watched, and Rhavaniel let out a bitter sigh.

"What luck I have, to be here now," she spat. "Or is it fate? I don't know what to call it anymore. I don't know which one is better."

"Does it matter?" her grandmother asked, not backing down from Rhavaniel's onslaught. "Would you live your life differently if you believed in one or the other?" Rhavaniel didn't move.

"Of course not," her grandmother answered for her. "The things you're fighting for wouldn't change. Your life wouldn't change." She sighed ever so slightly. "I will not force you to talk, not if you don't want to. But I do think you should. If not to me, then to Belhadron, because he knows you better than anyone here."

Rhavaniel scoffed. "I don't think that's happening anytime soon," she muttered. Her grandmother arched a brow.

"I could see there was something off about the two of you," she said. "I'm assuming those parents of his had a part in it."

Rhavaniel sighed, and leant on the table. She could smell the spices, still, and some part of her calmed, just a little, like a break in the storm. "He's frustrated because I don't think he knows how to help, and he thinks he doesn't know me, not as well as I know him, which on some level implies that I don't trust him as much as he trusts me, because he's never had any sort of barriers with me, and suddenly, because of everything that's happened, he thinks I am holding back from him." She let out a bitter laugh. "Which I am. But then I don't know how to do anything else."

"That child is just as damaged as you, in some ways," her grandmother said. Rhavaniel shot her a glare.

"He still has both his hands," she hissed. "He still has everything he's always had. He still has Legolas, still has me, still wakes up every morning knowing that his life is intact. He's not damaged, not like this." She raised her arm, the white bandages spotted with flour and dark spices.

Her grandmother sighed softly. "My dear," she said. "Pain is relative. And he's just about keeping his head above water at the moment. Just like you." She reached out and took Rhavaniel's hand, the useless, ruined one, as if it were no different to the one that could kill an orc in a second. "I will make no demands of you, nor of him. But you are fractured, the both of you, and fractured things will not mend themselves if left to stand alone in an empty room."

Rhavaniel huffed. "If I had wanted cryptic words and advice that isn't advice at all, then I would have invited Mithrandir to stay here."

"What did you want, then?" her grandmother asked. Rhavaniel leant on the table, studying the crevices outlined in flour in the wood as her hands, or her good hand at least, gripped the edge.

"I don't know," she snapped, though the ire was slowly draining from her voice. She didn't look up from the table.

"Take your anger out on the bread, not on me," her grandmother said mildly. She went back to her own dough as if nothing had happened. "You know," she said calmly as she kneaded, as Rhavaniel stared at the table and her flour-covered hands, "I have every confidence in you."

Rhavaniel felt like if she tore her gaze away from the table, away from studying the fine grains in the wood, then she might lose the grip she had on everything. Her grandmother either didn't see the coiled tension across her shoulders, or saw it and knew that she had to continue and not back down from the silent threat of someone who had been trained, for centuries, to be a killer and a spy.

"As someone who is far older than you, and who has seen this before," her grandmother continued. "You'll live."

Rhavaniel laughed bitterly under her breath. "I am aware of that," she muttered. "Strangely enough."

"No," her grandmother corrected. "You know you'll survive. Knowing you'll live? Well, that's a different thing entirely."

Rhavaniel didn't answer immediately. She heaved a sigh, a deep, shuddering breath that trembled down her body. "I can't," she said eventually. "I can't think like that. Not at the moment."

"Then don't," her grandmother replied, not looking up from her bread as she kneaded it. "You have two weeks here to work things out, both in your own head and between you and Belhadron. My advice, not that you have to follow it, is to sort things out with Belhadron first. This tension between you is making both of you more miserable, and it will be easier to help yourself if things are better for the two of you." She picked up her dough and slapped it back down on the table. "You'll make it. I have every faith in you."

Rhavaniel nodded slowly. She forcibly unclenched her hand from where it had been gripping the edge of the table, stretching out the fingers of both hands as best she could. Her hands were steady, had been for the entire conversation, and she blew out a breath and let her shoulders sag. She reached for her bread, and the smell of the spices caused an old, bittersweet ache to settle once again in the hollow of her chest as she began to knead the dough.

0-o-0-o-0

The days wore on, and they wore on slowly. Belhadron spent his time between the village forge, where Rhavaniel's aunt was a blacksmith, and training, going on long runs through the surrounding woods because he had nothing else to do, and that made him uneasy.

Rhavaniel spent most of her time wandering around the house and across the talans above. She would nap for hours in the trees above the house, grey cloak folded around her and hood up over her face. She didn't sleep, not properly; her sense of preservation was too finely tuned for her to let down her guard like that, but she could doze, half asleep whilst still alert enough to be ready for any threats, even if her waking mind knew she was safe.

The first time she'd done that, Belhadron had worried over her and had climbed up to her. She'd woken violently, nearly tipping him out the tree, and he'd looked torn between staying too close to her to try and help, and leaving her alone because of the growing strain between them. She had noticed, of course, and hadn't refrained from commenting on it. Belhadron had replied with a few bitter words of his own, but they had both dropped it before it became a true argument.

Rhavaniel didn't know if she had done that because she was too tired to argue with him, or because she had been too afraid of what might happen if they did.

Rhavaniel flinched away when Belhadron instinctively went to carry her bag for her one evening, and Belhadron couldn't seem to help the snide comment that slipped past his lips. In the next moment, it was clear that he regretted it, but Rhavaniel was too tired, and merely shot back with scathing words. What she said she didn't pay much attention to, but judging by the look on Belhadron's face, it had only widened the divide between them.

Her aunt and uncle watched, looking worried as Rhavaniel and Belhadron spoke less and less to each other, staying out of the way of each other unless they had to interact. The two of them knew better than to be so antagonistic towards each other when Rhavaniel's grandmother was around, partly because Rhavaniel didn't want to give her grandmother anything more to indicate she wasn't coping, and partly because Belhadron was still a little terrified of her. But when they were alone, it soon devolved into cold remarks and colder gazes, flinching away from each other when one of them would briefly forget and reach for the other to help.

It had been four days since they'd ridden into the village, and still Belhadron found himself unable to quite get past the peacefulness that was settled over the village. Every time an elf came into the forge and stayed to talk with Rhavaniel's aunt, Belhadron found his breathing quicken and a restlessness run underneath his skin. It took him three days before he realised what the problem was. He couldn't remember the last time he'd seen people so unhurried, with nothing more important than stopping to talk to an old friend, and he couldn't quite tell whether it was envy or anger thrumming beneath his skin. Either way, his gaze checked the exits every time someone new walked in.

A figure appeared in the doorway, silhouetted against the midday sun that was finally appearing after days behind grey clouds. Instinctively Belhadron's hand tightened around the dull, half-formed blade in his grip that he'd been testing the balance of. The next moment the figure stepped inside, and guilt surged up and clawed at Belhadron's throat as he recognised her step, the way she moved. He dropped the blade with a clang.

Rhavaniel stepped further inside the forge, purposefully relaxing her stance and keeping her hands by her side. "I was sent to ask if you wanted lunch," she said, leaning against one of the tables by the door.

"Actually, I think we're finished for the day," her aunt said, setting a hammer down and wiping her hands on a cloth tucked into her leather apron. "I'll clear up here, because if you do it, Belhadron, I'm sure I won't find half of my tools again. Go back to the house and get some lunch, my dears. I'll come along in a little while."

Belhadron hesitated. "Are you sure?" he asked. "I can stay, clear up some of this if you want to get lunch."

Rhavaniel's aunt just gave him a look. "Go," she said, giving him a little push towards Rhavaniel. "Drag him out of here if you have to, my dear," she said to her. "He's meant to be on rest, not working from dawn to dusk."

"I don't have anything else to do!" protested Belhadron as Rhavaniel grabbed his arm and began to drag him outside. Her aunt laughed, and then Belhadron stumbled over the doorway and was outside.

Rhavaniel dropped his arm as soon as they were out of sight of the forge, and walked just quickly enough to be just in front of Belhadron as they made their way through the village back to the house. Belhadron rolled his eyes, but kept quiet.

He could tell, by the set of her shoulders and her measured, even walk, that Rhavaniel was fairly deep inside her own head. There was always a danger of that with her. Her job was a solitary one at times, with sometimes months spent on her own in the most dangerous parts of the realms. Belhadron was well versed in making sure Rhavaniel didn't stray too far into her own head, but at the moment he didn't know whether or not he should do anything, for fear of making it worse between them. Every time he opened his mouth, he seemed to make things worse.

Rhavaniel was most likely not paying much attention to her surroundings. Despite what was between them, Belhadron was fairly sure that she still trusted him enough to warn her if there was any threat. It was innate. No matter what happened between them, they would trust each other with their lives without question. Trusting someone with a life, with stopping death, was easy. It was everything else that was difficult to trust someone else with, especially with two such scarred warriors as the both of them.

They were walking down one of the smaller paths off the central green, Rhavaniel a few steps ahead of Belhadron, when there came a sudden clatter of wood, and a high pitched shriek. Belhadron jumped when two small elflings hurtled out from behind a house.

Rhavaniel did more than jump. As soon as the elflings appeared she was startled out of wherever she'd been, deep in her head, and went for the first thing that she had been trained to do, so deeply ingrained that it was instinct. Her right hand, her ruined, scarred hand, went for a hidden knife at the small of her back as her body fell into a stance that Belhadron recognised so well, for he'd faced her with a sword in his own hand too many times to not recognise when she was about to strike.

He acted on instinct. Launching forwards, he grabbed Rhavaniel around the waist, pulling her back as the elflings turned towards them in shock, mouths falling open. Rhavaniel lashed out at him and Belhadron's head snapped back as her elbow connected with his jaw. His hold only tightened on her and with his free hand he snatched at her hand, forcing her fingers to fall open and drop the knife. Rhavaniel let out a snarl of pain and bucked in his grip as his fingers closed around her damaged hand.

The elflings watched, eyes wide, as the two dangerous elves briefly grappled in front of them. Belhadron looked up briefly, and at the dark, shuttered look in his eyes, they turned and ran off together, disappearing into the village.

Rhavaniel shoved at Belhadron's arms. "You can let go now," she hissed through clenched teeth. "I won't stab anyone."

Belhadron loosened his hold, and Rhavaniel instantly slipped from his grasp. She bent to pick up her knife, but her right hand was spasming, and she could barely curl her fingers around it. Finally she used her left, instead, and sheathed the blade at the small of her back. Without a word she turned and began to walk away.

"Hold on."

Rhavaniel came reluctantly to a stop, and looked back over her shoulder. Belhadron nearly winced at the expression on her face: utter weariness, which cloaked something much darker and dangerous. "I am not in the mood for this, Belhadron," she said, her voice sounding so tired. She turned back to the path.

Belhadron watched her take a few more steps away from him. Her right hand trembled at her side, and she tried to clench her fist. Only the first three fingers curled up to her hand; the fourth and fifth barely moved.

At that sight, something in Belhadron snapped. He ran forwards, grabbing Rhavaniel's shoulder. "Stop."

Rhavaniel very nearly went to grab his hand, but pulled herself back at the last minute. She shrugged out of his grip. "I have nothing to say to you."

Belhadron jogged forwards, and then abruptly stepped into Rhavaniel's path, forcing her to come to a halt. "I'm done," he said, anger seeping through in his voice. "I can't do this anymore."

Rhavaniel looked up at him. "That's your issue," she said in a hollow voice. She made to step around him, but Belhadron swiftly moved into her path.

Rhavaniel's eyes flashed. "Get out of my way," she said, a hint of a snarl falling into her voice. She made to move around him again, but Belhadron put out a hand. She looked up, and her expression reminded Belhadron more of the rumours and myths of the spymaster, the Elvenking's phantom, than of his friend.

"I am done," he said slowly, trying to keep his voice calm. "Watching you crumble and fall apart. I am done just standing there, for fear of making things worse. I am trying to help. All I want to do is help."

"Because you know exactly what to say," Rhavaniel snapped. "How to help, what to do to make sure that I am _fixed_. Haven't you ever considered that this is not your problem?"

"It's my problem when I'm here and watching you slowly become less and less each day," Belhadron replied. "And maybe I'm a terrible friend, because I've only just really noticed the damage you're doing to yourself, but I'm still your friend." He reached out for Rhavaniel, anger and grief and worry all leaking through in his expression, but Rhavaniel ducked his hand.

"I don't want to do this, Belhadron," Rhavaniel said with a glare. "Just leave it."

"That's not happening," Belhadron replied. "Because I know you could have slipped my hold and had me on my back in about five seconds, if you wanted to. But you didn't. So I can only think there's a part of you that wants to stay. A part that is actually going to sensible enough to ask for help."

Rhavaniel scoffed. "Don't act as if you are so much better than me," she spat back at him. "Like you aren't in just as much denial as the rest of us. At least I'm alive, right? At least I'm not dead. Because as long as Legolas is alive, as long as I'm still here, then the hundreds of others who _died_ don't matter, do they? As long as the precious few that you actually care about are still alive, then the rest doesn't matter to you." She sneered. "Do you know how selfish that sounds?"

Belhadron was silent for a moment, eyes wide and dark as he stared at her. Rhavaniel knew that he didn't immediately shout back at her because a small part of him believed what she'd said. She watched as he pushed the words, pushed the grief and fear down deep inside, and she watched as anger rose to take its place.

"Don't you _dare_ accuse me of that," Belhadron hissed, finally finding his voice. "Don't you dare tell me that I am selfish because I care so much about you!"

"And don't think I can't see what you're doing," he snapped. "Because this isn't about me. This is about you! You are terrified and you are lost, but you aren't going to let anyone in to help you, because the Valar forbid that they see you are weak or damaged. No, you have to preserve your perfect reputation."

"My reputation has saved your life, and the lives of so many others, over and over again!" Rhavaniel spat back. "I have given up so much for this realm, more than you could ever know!" She stopped, taking a breath, as if a little surprised at her outburst. "You have no right to talk about the things you don't understand," she said. "So don't try to lecture me on any of this."

Belhadron laughed bitterly. "And you are still avoiding the problem!" he shouted. "You are terrified, and you think you are alone, and you won't listen to me when I tell you that you aren't!"

"Because shouting at me is the best way to get it across," Rhavaniel retorted. "And you don't get to try and decide what I need. You are still so damn selfish, trying to do everything you can to _fix_ me, to keep your little perfect life intact. Well, that perfect life broke the second you became a warrior. It broke the second your brother was killed because of the same things we were taught to believe, and you still cannot see it!"

She took a breath, and continued before she could feel regret at the pain across Belhadron's face. "Your mother was right, you know," she said. "You'd gladly walk to your death if it meant keeping Legolas or myself alive, because deep down you know it's easier than actually facing the truth. And that truth is that we have been so damaged, for so long, that we don't know how to be whole again!"

Belhadron blinked. His chest heaved, the pain and grief and everything written clearly on his face as he struggled for words. "You… how can you say that?" Rhavaniel didn't answer, and Belhadron's expression slowly darkened into anger. "At least I have morals," he spat. "At least I stand by the things I believe in. You, your morals change to suit whatever commands you are given. I don't know if there is anything you wouldn't do, if you weren't told to."

"Because I am doing my job!" Rhavaniel retorted quickly, eyes flashing in anger. "Because I am doing everything I can to try and survive, to make sure that as many people as possible survive. That is our job, what we do, and you cannot put that guilt onto me!" She heaved a breath. "I've had enough," she said. "I'm going back for lunch."

Belhadron reached out and grabbed her shoulder. Rhavaniel whirled, grabbing Belhadron's arm and twisting it until he staggered, jaw clenched to prevent a shout of pain slipping past his lips. "Stop," she said, her voice low and sounding more sinister than Belhadron had heard in a long time. Belhadron just shook his head.

"Why?" asked Rhavaniel. "Why are you doing this?"

"Because I love you!" Belhadron shouted, his voice cracking as tears spilled over and ran down his cheeks. "Because you are my family! And you have no idea how much it hurts to watch you in pain."

Rhavaniel coiled like a cat about to strike. "Oh, you do _not_ get to manipulate me like that!" she spat. "You do not get to try and make me spill all my fears and secrets because you are _hurting_."

"Don't you understand that all I want to do is help?" Belhadron shouted. "You've been playing an act ever since Erebor, and it was either a good one or I'm a terrible person, because I've only just started to really see the cracks, but I can see them now. I can see how much pain you're in. I cannot watch you break. I will not." His chest heaved, tears rolling down his cheeks as he faced her.

"You need to listen to me," he said. "You have to try and-"

Rhavaniel's face became fey as she turned on Belhadron. "You do not get to tell me how I feel!" she shouted, shoving him back with a push of her hand. "You do not get to decide the ways in which I am allowed to hurt! I am more than that!"

Belhadron stepped back, eyes dark as he stared at Rhavaniel, her own face set in stone. "Maybe you don't know me as well as I thought," he said, his voice hollow. "Because if you did know me, you would know that I would never do that to you."

Rhavaniel flinched at the words. "I can't do this," she said, the minutest of cracks appearing in her face, which widened as she forced the words out. "Not now. I just can't." She turned and walked away, face held in stone through sheer determination.

Belhadron wiped at his cheeks, his breathing ragged and his hands trembling. Only once Rhavaniel disappeared from his sight did he take a deep breath, turn and walk the other way.

 _Oh, I am evil. I am very evil indeed. They are so horrible to each other because they know each other so well that they know each other's weaknesses and flaws, and in this situation, neither of them hesitate to exploit them to get the upper hand. So this was interesting for me to write, for me to pull out the character flaws in Belhadron and Rhavaniel and then throw them into this. Belhadron is selfish, in a way: he prioritises the safety of those he loves over that of people he doesn't know, and he values them much more. And Rhavaniel creates such a facade to maintain her reputation that she doesn't know how to be vulnerable anymore, and as a spy, she has fairly dubious morals. And then it all just implodes._

 _The idea of Belhadron telling Rhavaniel he loves her, and Rhavaniel throwing it back in his face, was something that I came up with in the middle of the night and promptly laughed at it, because I'm evil like that. I was thinking of ways to make this argument really personal and painful, and, well... I did that. Oh, and for the record, I do ship them in some way or another, but nothing will happen between them until after the war ends (for reasons explained later in this story)._

 _It's never easy when good friends fight. On the other hand, Belhadron is, as you will see next chapter, literally incapable of holding a grudge against the people he loves, so I'm not going to drag this out for many chapters at all. Hope nobody is too crushed by this chapter!_

 _As always, reviews are very welcome. I'll see you all next Saturday._


	7. 6: Lights in the Fountain (Part Five)

**We Can Make It If We Run**

 **Chapter Six: Lights in the Fountain**

 **Part Five**

 _Sorry if this is a little late for some people- it's technically still Saturday for me, but only just. It's been a busy day, I've been worrying needlessly over something else (which is all sorted, it's fine, I just got very distracted by it) and because it's the holidays, it's impossible for me to keep track of what day it is anymore._

 _Again, this chapter is short. Unfortunately it's just the way the story was written, because if I added the next scene in as well, this would be very long and there would be no suspense, as the next scene resolves the argument between Belhadron and Rhavaniel. The next chapter will be pretty long, so sorry for the shortness of this one, but you've got next week's to look forwards to._

 _This chapter comprises of Rhavaniel's grandmother having a few choice words to say to Belhadron over the argument. It took me quite a long time to get this scene right- get Rhavaniel's grandmother right, and make sure her words fitted perfectly, or as near as I could get it. Rhavaniel's grandmother is one of those people who is completely ready to figuratively smack some sense into someone if she needs to, so won't hold back._

 _As always, reviews are very welcome._

 _0-o-0-o-0_

Belhadron opened the back door into the kitchen, wincing as it creaked. He slipped inside, fully intending on going to the room he was staying in and avoiding Rhavaniel, who was probably up above in the trees, but as soon as he was in the door, his gaze fell on the figure sitting at the kitchen table.

Rhavaniel's grandmother was reading a book, angling the pages so she could better read the book by the fire. It looked old, a leather cover that glinted in the firelight, and thick pages that rustled as she turned them.

She looked up, studying Belhadron as he stood in the doorway. "Sit," she said, indicating a chair opposite her.

Belhadron paused. "I was just going to change out of these clothes," he said, pulling at the throat of his tunic. He had been out running, trying to clear his head as best as he could, and his tunic was soaked through with sweat.

Rhavaniel's grandmother just arched a brow, and nodded at the chair again. "Sit," she said, and it was not an invitation. Belhadron tried to remind himself that he was a captain, a commander in the King's army, one of the best warriors in the realm and the Prince's right hand, but it all collapsed under the weight of her stare. Before he even really knew it, he had folded into the chair opposite her.

She put down her book. "What happened to your face?" she asked, nodding at the bruise that was slowly turning purple on his jaw. Belhadron shrugged.

"Took a wrong step whilst up moving through the treetops," he replied. "I wasn't thinking, and took a branch to the face as a result." He looked her in the eyes, knowing full well that she could probably see through any lie he came up with.

"Of course," Rhavaniel's grandmother murmured. Belhadron held back a sigh of relief, which suddenly vanished when she fixed him with a piercing look.

"So you and Rhavaniel had your argument, I hear," she said. Belhadron blinked, and she smiled sharply. "Elves gossip. And you chose to make your stand in a place where there were plenty of ears to listen."

Belhadron held her gaze, and then dropped his head with a sigh. "I messed up," he muttered. "Badly."

"From what I've heard, the blame lies on both of you, if there is any blame at all," Rhavaniel's grandmother said. "Grief always shows itself in different ways. This was going to happen eventually."

"And that makes me feel better," Belhadron snapped. In the next moment he grimaced, and ran his hand through his hair. "Apologies. That was uncalled for."

"It was," Rhavaniel's grandmother replied. "But I accept your apology." She leaned back in her chair and studied Belhadron. "Your parents have rattled you, have they not? The questions they asked, whatever they said about the whole affair of Erebor, it's left you questioning what you did, and why you did it." It was a statement, not a question, and Belhadron could do nothing but nod.

"I am a soldier at heart," he said. "And I follow orders. I follow my Prince, before anyone else. But those questions… I won't forget them easily."

"Whatever your parents have to say about things," Rhavaniel's grandmother said. "It has no effect on anything that has already happened. Besides, they hardly know what they are talking about."

Belhadron paused, hearing something in her voice. He looked up. "You think we were right," he said slowly. "What we did at Erebor, becoming involved like we did. You think we were right."

She sat back opposite him, her gaze steady. "I'm not telling you what I think."

A glimmer of something sharp and dangerous settled in Belhadron's eyes, and now he studied Rhavaniel's grandmother. "No, perhaps I am wrong," he murmured. "Rhavaniel has always been so much better at reading people than I will ever be. But, if you will forgive me, I think that even though you've been out of the game for centuries, you have not forgotten how to play. And you know more than you are letting on."

"You don't know a thing about me, child," Rhavaniel's grandmother replied. "And you are treading on dangerous ground."

"I know," Belhadron said with a wry smile that didn't reach his eyes. "But I am too tired to duck my head and give in."

"Do you think you could?" Rhavaniel's grandmother asked. "There is no shame against walking away."

Belhadron shook his head immediately. "Not whilst Legolas is tied to his duty," he replied. "I would never abandon him, or Rhavaniel. Whatever quarrel we have at the moment, even if she never deigns to fight next to me again, I wouldn't do that. Besides," he said, with a slight smile. "Being a warrior is so deeply ingrained in me, I don't know that I could ever be anything else."

"I thought that," Rhavaniel's grandmother said. "Up until I left. And then I became something else."

"But I can still see what you were, I think," Belhadron said. "Again, I'm not sure. Rhavaniel does this far better than I ever could, but I think I can still see what you were all those centuries ago. It's what I am at the moment."

"And what is that?"

Belhadron grinned, the ruthless grin of someone who was too tired to keep avoiding the truths anymore. "Bloody."

Rhavaniel's grandmother sat back in her chair, nodding slightly as she studied Belhadron. "You have been through the wars, haven't you?" she said. "And quite literally, too." Her gaze was sharp, and unnerving, and Belhadron could only hold it because it was so similar to Rhavaniel's when she was digging for answers, and he had been on the receiving end of that stare too many times to count.

Still, she studied him until she was, apparently, satisfied with what she had unearthed from whatever tells he still had. "I will not speak on Rhavaniel's behalf," she said. "But I think you two have been through far too much together for that argument to have torn you apart."

She studied him a moment more, her gaze sharp and clear and weighted down by everything she had seen, everything she had done.

"Do you regret it?"

Belhadron huffed a bitter laugh. "What I said? Absolutely. The problem with having been around each other for centuries is that we know each other's weaknesses, and neither of us was afraid of using those to hurt each other earlier. But trying to talk to her, trying to help?" He shook his head. "I care for her far too much to stand to one side. If she hates me for it, then so be it. But I will do whatever I can to make sure she doesn't break."

"She's not broken."

Belhadron looked up. "What?"

"Rhavaniel is not broken," her grandmother said, her voice stern. "And you are not as good of a friend as you think you are, if you believe that she is. She's been hurt. She's damaged. We all are, and especially the two of you, after everything you have seen and done. But broken, that suggests that the pieces you have lost are irretrievable. That you cannot be fixed."

She shook her head, looking back at her book. "It is not up to you to heal anyone but yourself. Fixing yourself doesn't even come into this, because to say that suggests that what you are now, what Rhavaniel is now, is less than what you were before. And if you want to keep your fingers, you would be wise not to suggest that to her."

"A person is never more, or less," she said, turning over a page in her book. "They just are. And you do not get to try and _fix_ the parts you think need fixing. You only get to be there for her."

Belhadron stared at her, the slight sway of his dark hair, loose around his shoulders, the only movement in that moment. Rhavaniel's grandmother didn't look up from her book as Belhadron choked on a breath, barely holding back a sob, and dropped his head to the table. "I messed up really badly, didn't I?" he murmured, pushing his hair back from his face.

"You did," Rhavaniel's grandmother replied. "But then Rhavaniel, from what I have heard, did the same. You two can certainly be a volatile combination." Belhadron murmured something that was muffled due to his hands covering his face, but it sounded like an agreement.

"When you're not hurting and grieving and angry, though…" she mused, glancing briefly at Belhadron over the top of her book. "You are formidable together. They say the strongest friendships are forged in fire, you know."

"Then we're both seriously burnt," Belhadron murmured, his voice lifeless. Rhavaniel's grandmother levelled him with a look.

"You're being far too dramatic," she chided. "One argument is not the end of the world. Everything you've been through, that was not enough to end the world, or even just end the both of you. All of that, and you couldn't be taken down." Belhadron glanced up, hearing the slight heat deep in her voice, and Rhavaniel's grandmother smiled sharply as she met his gaze.

"You'll work it out," she said, and her voice carried an unshakeable faith in them that Belhadron couldn't help but notice. He knew, as her gaze softened slightly, that she wasn't just talking about their argument, but about everything, all of the damage they now carried.

"How do you know?" he asked.

Rhavaniel's grandmother studied him for a moment, as if trying to decide what words would work best for whatever purpose she had. "Because I know that there are two options here. Either you carry on, or you don't. And I don't think either of you are the type to ever give up on something so important. You haven't yet."

Belhadron held her gaze, and then dropped his head to rest it in his hands. He was silent for a long time, staring at the table until Rhavaniel's grandmother got up and fetched a basket of vegetables, putting them in front of him and handing him a knife. She returned to her book as Belhadron began to cut the tops off the root vegetables, and, for the moment, there was quiet.

 _So yeah, it's short, but the next chapter has the resolution of the argument between Belhadron and Rhavaniel, and is pretty long. I hope you enjoyed it, and as always, reviews are very welcome. I'll see you all next Saturday._


	8. 7: Lights in the Fountain (Part Six)

**We Can Make It If We Run**

 **Chapter Seven: Lights in the Fountain**

 **Part Six**

 _I am so sorry that this is a day late again- I was out competing with my horse yesterday, and it didn't go too well, so when I got home I was very tired and distracted, and just completely forgot. It's also been a pretty stressful week, because I got my exam results this week, which determine whether or not I get into my chosen university- I got in, and got good grades, so I am very happy, but it was quite stressful! On the plus side, though, this is the chapter where Belhadron and Rhavaniel resolve their argument and sort things out, so I hope everyone enjoys it!_

 _As always, reviews are very welcome._

 _0-o-0-o-0_

It took him a few moments to work out what had woken him. He lay there, listening, but for a second could only hear his own breathing and his heartbeat, sharp and loud in his ears.

There was a muffled sound, just on the edge of Belhadron's hearing. He sat up slowly, untangling the blankets from around his legs. His hand closed around the hilt of his small knife, the one with the ash handle, that he'd put under his pillow before he'd gone to sleep. It was hardly the worst habit he'd picked up over the centuries, even if it could be a little dangerous at times.

He picked out the sound of light footsteps, out of the creaking branches and rustling of the leaves. Belhadron slid out of his bed as he listened to someone hurry through the house. The footsteps were light enough that he guessed it to be Rhavaniel's grandmother. Training lingered, and neither Rhavaniel's aunt nor uncle had been in the army. Rhavaniel herself would be silent, of course.

Belhadron was nearly at the door when he remembered his knife. He put it down on the side, instantly feeling the strange loss that came with being completely without weapons, and slipped out the door.

In the hallway, he could hear more clearly. There was the sound of footsteps again, and then a choked, muffled cry. Worry leapt up and clawed at his throat, because he recognised her the moment he heard her.

He ran through the house, heading straight to Rhavaniel's room. Her grandmother met him in the hallway, looking stern and worried at the same time. "I've got this," Belhadron said quickly, moving past her and cracking open the door to Rhavaniel's room. "Don't come in until I say you can, or you might get a knife thrown at your head."

"What about your head?" Rhavaniel's grandmother asked.

Belhadron shrugged. "I'll be fine," he said quickly, eyes darting to the door again. Rhavaniel's grandmother saw the restless energy in him, the fine thread of control that was only just keeping him from darting into the room so that he could reassure them. She nodded, and stepped back, waving a hand at Rhavaniel's aunt and uncle who had appeared at the end of the hallway. They stopped where they were, watching worriedly.

Belhadron barely nodded before he darted inside the room. Rhavaniel was asleep, but in the throes of a nightmare. The covers were tangled around her and she twisted. A muffled murmur escaped her clenched teeth.

Belhadron didn't even think twice before moving over to her bed and sitting on the side, far enough away that she wouldn't accidentally touch him as she twisted. "Rhavaniel," he said softly. "Rhavaniel, it's a dream. It's just a dream."

He didn't move from that position, talking softly to Rhavaniel as she twisted, murmurs escaping her lips as she was trapped in her own head. He knew better than to try and wake her up, because she would wake disorientated and with a weapon in her hand, and would lash out at whomever she saw as a threat.

"It's just me," he murmured softly, something in his chest clenching as he watched her dream. He would wish to take her nightmares, or for them to not have gone through what they did to earn these nightmares in the first place, but that was pointless, so he didn't. He merely sat there, talking softly to her as she slept, hoping that she would wake up soon enough. "It's just me, I'm here. It's a dream."

Rhavaniel whimpered, and the sound drove a dagger into Belhadron's heart. He nearly abandoned all of his common sense and shook her awake then and there, but he managed to hold his hand at the last minute. "Please wake up," he murmured. "Please, just wake up."

He sat there for another minute or so, talking softly to her. Rhavaniel moaned, and then, without warning, her entire body tensed and she shot up from the bed with a muffled cry. As Belhadron knew she would, she twisted almost as soon as she woke, going straight for what she perceived as the threat behind her.

Belhadron launched forwards and grabbed her, pinning her arms to her sides. "It's me!" he shouted. "It's me, it's just me. You're safe. You're in your grandmother's house. It was just a dream. Rhavaniel, it was just a dream."

Rhavaniel struggled against him. She got one arm free and Belhadron's head snapped back as her elbow connected with his jaw, again. "It was a dream!" he said as Rhavaniel twisted in his arms. "Rhavaniel, it's me. Please, it's me."

Rhavaniel slowly stilled, and Belhadron relaxed his hold on her, though he didn't let her go. There was silence.

A whimper forced its way through Rhavaniel's clenched teeth. Her shoulders shook. Belhadron tightened his arms around her again, enveloping her in an embrace. "It was just a dream," he murmured. "I'm here. It's me. It's just me."

Rhavaniel stayed silent for a few more moments, through sheer force of will, and then a sob slipped out through her lips. She doubled over, harsh, jagged cries seemingly wrenched out of her as she shook in his arms.

There was movement by the door. Belhadron looked up, and just shook his head. The shadow moved away from the door, leaving them alone. He looked back to Rhavaniel. She shuddered, and he let her go, moving so he was sitting opposite her on the bed. "You are in your room, in your grandmother's house," he said softly. "It is three weeks until midwinter. It has been just over three weeks since we arrived home. A few days ago, you made bread. We had a massive argument yesterday, and barely talked to each other at dinner. You let your aunt cut up your meat for you, because we weren't talking and you wouldn't ask me. Your grandmother had made sweet buns for after dinner."

Rhavaniel shuddered again, her throat working in a fairly visible effort not to be sick. Belhadron itched to lean forwards and embrace her, comfort her, but he knew that he couldn't, not at the moment. He kept talking instead, anything he could think of that was a world away from what she would have seen in her dreams.

Eventually Rhavaniel sat up, leaning against the wall. There was a thin sheen of sweat on her skin, and her hair hung loose around her face.

Belhadron shifted, and the rustle of the blanket against his leggings made Rhavaniel jump. Belhadron moved closer to her. "Can I?" he asked, one hand outstretched.

Rhavaniel paused, and then nodded. Slowly, every movement made obvious and non-threatening, Belhadron moved up the bed so he was sitting next to her. He carefully placed one arm around her shoulders, making sure not to let his hand go too close to her throat.

Rhavaniel swallowed heavily. She hated that he had to ask, that he couldn't do anything quickly when she was like this, disorientated and on edge, ready to strike out at anything that appeared as a possible threat. Her hands were perfectly steady, though the rest of her body trembled like a leaf, and she knew that if Belhadron moved too suddenly, if he restricted her in any way, even without meaning to, then he would end up hurt.

"I hate this," she murmured when she thought her voice would be steady enough. It still cracked, rasping in her throat, and she winced.

"Do you want water?" Belhadron asked. He slowly lifted his hand from her shoulder, moving to get up. Rhavaniel quickly shook her head, a lump forming in her throat.

"Don't," she rasped. "Not now." Belhadron nodded, and slumped back against her. He let out a sigh.

"You know, I don't think you even need to carry weapons," he mused. "Your elbows are sharp enough." He rubbed at his face, where a second bruise was rapidly forming.

Rhavaniel snorted softly in amusement, but it quickly faded. "I'm sorry," she murmured. "I really am."

"Ah, me too," Belhadron replied. "But we were both stupid, and trying to hurt each other because we were avoiding how much we were hurting. We've done it before."

"Since when did you see things so clearly?" Rhavaniel asked, her voice quiet in the night. Belhadron chuckled, his breath stirring her hair where she had leant a little against his shoulder.

"Since your grandmother sat me down and had a few choice words to say to me," he replied, a soft amusement to his voice. "And then left me to think about it for the evening. She still scares me, you know. I think it's because she reminds me of you."

"I'm not sure whether to take that as a compliment or not," Rhavaniel muttered. Belhadron laughed, and leant against her a little more. There was a tension in the air, the weight of things not yet said, but for the moment they ignored it. Rhavaniel rested her head on Belhadron's shoulder.

Belhadron cleared his throat. He went to speak, and then stopped, his throat working. Rhavaniel looked over at him as best she could when she was sitting next to him, but didn't say anything.

Belhadron blew out a breath, letting his head fall back against the wall. "I have this dream," he began, his voice slow as he struggled to find the right words. "A nightmare really. I have it a few times each week, if I'm lucky."

He paused, running a hand over his face. "In it, I'm up on Ravenhill. Legolas and I are fighting that orc, the one that threw Legolas down the slope and gave him the scratches down his face. I'm knocked back, like I was then, but this time the orc has a blade. And instead of knocking Legolas back of the slope, he stabs him."

Belhadron's voice was toneless. Rhavaniel suspected it was the only way he was able to recount the dream without breaking down. She leant on him a little more heavily, offering what voiceless reassurance she could.

"Legolas falls down the slope from Ravenhill, but this time he doesn't try and stop himself. He doesn't get up. And I run, I run after him, but he's just lying there. He doesn't get up." His voice cracked, and he took a deep steadying breath. "I never manage to reach him. The dream moves on before I get too close to him."

There was a soft rustle as Belhadron tried to get comfortable. "The next moment, I'm on top of Ravenhill. Legolas isn't there. I know he's dead, and each time, every single time, I spend too long trying to run forwards and look for him anyway, even though I can't move. And then the orcs below part." His voice became just a little bitter, and Rhavaniel knew that in his dreams he could see the valley exactly as it had been, crawling with orcs and covered in the dead. She knew she could still smell it, let alone see it.

"I can see him," Belhadron said, his voice a mere whisper. "And you. You're dead, both of you just lying there. Sometimes I can hear Thranduil scream behind me, and all of a sudden I can move, but it's too late, because you're both dead and you _won't get up_." He heaved a breath, his voice becoming detached once more. "I always wake up before I can reach you."

Rhavaniel was silent for a moment, still against him, and Belhadron fought against his desire to tighten his hold on her, to make sure she was there and alive. He knew if he did that too soon after Rhavaniel had woken up, he would get another elbow in the face.

"In mine, I'm fighting in the middle of the valley, like I really was."

Rhavaniel's voice was quiet, rasping slightly, but steady. They did this sometimes, took it in turns to offer up a piece of themselves to the other. It had started out as a game between the two of them, but had ceased being that a while ago.

"Everything slowly fades. The shapes of the orcs become less distinct and more like shadows. Everything else becomes darker and darker, until I can only see the faint ripple of movement through the blackness. I can still feel it, though. I can still hear the screams, I can still smell it, I can still feel the dead beneath my feet."

"I can feel the orcs around me. They get closer and closer in the darkness, and no matter how many I cut down, there are more, and the blackness starts to become something with weight. It's no longer just the absence of the light, anymore, it's something in itself, if that makes sense." Belhadron nodded, but didn't say anything. Rhavaniel drew a breath.

"I can't move. I don't have enough room to fight, and even if I did, I can't see my targets. I can't hear them over the screams of the dying. And then my arm, my useless, ruined arm won't work. It won't hold the knife, which falls at my feet. I can't pick it back up. I am alone, and I can do nothing." She shuddered. "I usually wake up just before the darkness forces its way down my throat."

Belhadron murmured something, and Rhavaniel twisted to look at him. "What was that?" she asked.

Belhadron shrugged. "I think," he said slowly, trading up another piece of himself. "That we're going to take a long time to come back from this. I think that I feel guilty because how can I feel adrift, when I haven't really lost anything? I don't have any right to feel like I'm drowning, because I'm fine. Compared to others, I am so, so lucky."

"Don't be ridiculous," Rhavaniel murmured. "As my grandmother said to me, pain is relative. Just because others have suffered more than you it does not mean you haven't been hurt, and you shouldn't deny that to yourself. You're allowed to feel lost and damaged."

"By that logic, so are you," Belhadron replied. Rhavaniel was quiet, and then stiffly nodded.

"Fine, I'll accept that," she murmured. "I owe you two, now." She paused. "I think… I think I have spent so long making sure every single crack is shored up and covered, making sure I am impenetrable, because otherwise in my job I would be killed, that I don't know how to let anyone in. I think I'm starting to become scared that I will become nothing more than my reputation, in the end."

Belhadron huffed, and pulled Rhavaniel a little closer. "You are so much more than whatever reputation you have crafted," he said, pressing a kiss to her temple. "And you always will be. But, if you are scared of that, then I promise to make sure you never go that far. Whatever it takes."

Rhavaniel breathed a sigh. "Thank you," she murmured.

"As for the other thing," Belhadron said. "Isn't that why we play this stupid game? Neither of us is particularly good at speaking our hearts. Our minds are a different matter, and we speak them freely, but our hearts…"

"Those are fickle things, and we are too accustomed to keeping them held back," Rhavaniel finished for him. She nodded. "I know."

Belhadron sighed. "I think…" he began, pausing to try and find the right words. "I think that I'm scared too. I'm scared that we're going to lose. That we're going to lose everything. That I've only held onto what I love through sheer luck so far, and that it's going to get ripped away from me sooner or later."

Rhavaniel tensed against him. Belhadron shifted, ready to move back from her, but she shook her head and leant into him. "It's fine," she said. "I haven't felt like I've needed to throw up for a few minutes now."

Belhadron huffed a rough laugh. "That's always good," he muttered. He rested his arm back around her shoulders, and she sighed.

"I don't have any words of comfort for that one," Rhavaniel said. "We won this time. We might lose the next. I don't know. But the ones you love have held onto you just as hard as you've held onto us. And I won't let go anytime soon. I promise you that."

Belhadron murmured his thanks, and they fell silent. The words were churning in Rhavaniel's mind, the ones she knew she needed to say, but couldn't seem to form on her tongue. Even the thought of them made her eyes burn and a heavy weight settle on her chest.

"I think-"

She cut herself off, heaving a breath. Her hand trembled in her lap, but she avoided looking at it, at seeing the cobweb of scabs and scars, the raised skin, red slowly fading into white.

"I think I've been deluding myself. And I'm terrified that I am actually broken." There was a sharp breath from Belhadron next to her, but he said nothing and she spoke on in a rush, terrified that if she stopped the words would cease to come.

"I don't know what is going to happen. I don't know what use of my arm I will ever get back. I don't know if I will be able to fight like I used to. And I'm terrified. I'm terrified that even if I can fight again I will still be broken, that I have still given too much of myself up for this realm." Her voice cracked. Belhadron tightened his arm around her as her chest heaved and she sobbed, just once, the grief spilling through in the tears that rolled down her cheeks.

"What do we do with weapons that are no longer sharp, or those we snap on the training fields?" she asked, her voice a mere whisper. "We take them apart and melt them down, remake them into something new. You can't do that with a person."

Belhadron was completely still beside her, and for a second, worry clawed at her throat. He must have noticed her tense, because the next moment he leant against her, and with his free hand he picked hers up. He laced his fingers with hers, bending them where they couldn't move on their own.

"Don't you dare," he said, his voice suddenly bright with anger and fierce, unyielding determination. "You are not broken. You cannot be broken. And it took your grandmother, as terrifying as she is, for me to see it, but I mean that literally. Not in the sense that you cannot be broken because what would I do if you were, because I couldn't cope if you were, because that's not mine to decide upon. I mean it in the sense that you cannot be broken, because it is not possible." His voice cracked, and his eyes stung, but he didn't untangle his hand from Rhavaniel's to wipe at them.

"A person is never more or less," he said slowly. "They just are. Those are your grandmother's words, by the way, and I didn't realise until she said them how true they were."

He paused, and then began again, a waver to his voice as he struggled to keep himself together enough to finish. "I will try, as hard as I can, to not take anything away from you. I will be here, if you need me, and I will do what you ask me to, but by the Valar, Rhavaniel, you are the strongest person I know. You'll come through."

Rhavaniel nodded, but she trembled. Tears slipped down her face and she let out a sob, pulled deep from her chest. She leant forwards and Belhadron wrapped his arms around her as she rested her head on his shoulder, and began to weep. He leant back against the wall, and tears rolled freely down his own cheeks as he held her.

Finally she stilled, raising her head from his shoulder. She took back his hand with some difficulty, the stiff fingers clumsy as she threaded her fingers with his.

Belhadron looked over at her, a small smile curving his lips. "Maybe I know you better than I thought," he said as the thought struck him. Rhavaniel rolled her eyes, but gestured at him to go on. He huffed a brief laugh. "Because I know the one thing I can say that will mean the most to you now."

"What?" asked Rhavaniel.

Belhadron squeezed her hand and met her gaze. "Are you going to let this beat you?" he asked, his voice fierce. "Are you going to let this win?"

Rhavaniel stared at him. And he watched as a fey light was kindled and began to burn in her eyes, as her lips curved into the beginning of a ruthless smile. "Never," she answered. "I will never be less than what I am, and nobody will ever take that away from me. I won't ever let them. I promise you that."

"I promise the same thing," Belhadron murmured. "Though I know it means more to you. Maybe together we'll actually end up keeping the promise."

"Possibly," Rhavaniel murmured. Her jaw cracked as she yawned. "We need to start planning for all this, work out what I need to do, what the both of us can do to make sure we come back from this."

Belhadron hummed in agreement. "It can wait until morning, though," he replied. "Late night planning is never the best idea if you can avoid it."

Rhavaniel huffed a laugh. "Remember when we stayed up the entire night trying to work out how to sort out that sudden influx of spiders that were threatening that settlement in the west, after half of us had just come back from the south and the other half had been doing double the work in our absence? I'm pretty sure any ideas we came up with after three in the morning were discarded almost instantly, because we came up with them whilst we were all trying not to fall asleep at the table."

Belhadron chuckled, his breath stirring the loose hair across Rhavaniel's forehead. "I remember that," he replied. "I think I bullied Legolas to go to sleep just past dawn, if only for a few hours. When I got back you'd taken my cloak and curled up in front of the fire. I sat down to sort out the mess we'd left, and it took me about ten minutes before I fell asleep at the table."

Rhavaniel yawned again. "Go to sleep," Belhadron murmured. She nodded, and slid down until she was lying down, pawing at the blanket and pulling it up over herself.

"You can stay," she muttered, eyes already beginning to unfocus. "Just… can it not be quiet?"

"Of course." Belhadron stole one of Rhavaniel's pillows and pushed her over a little, the bed more than big enough for two of them. He lay down and Rhavaniel curled up next to him, placing one hand on top of his chest. He put one arm around her shoulders, playing idly with a lock of her hair, and his heart thudded steadily underneath her hand.

Belhadron thought for a moment, and then softly, his voice barely more than a deep murmur in his chest, he began to sing.

It was an old song, a song sung in half-heard snatches around bright fires by people who didn't know where they had learnt the words. Rhavaniel relaxed, half murmuring the words for a few lines until she drifted off to sleep.

Even then, Belhadron didn't stop singing, his voice a low rumble as he murmured whatever words he could remember to the song, over and over again.

It was just past dawn when Rhavaniel's grandmother gently pushed the door open. She was silent; she had lived in this house for a long time, and knew how to open each door so that it didn't make a sound, where the floor would creak under her feet. Habits such as those had long been ingrained in her. She looked in around the door, to the bed up against the wall and the two sleeping there.

Belhadron was flat on his back, one arm around Rhavaniel. She was curled up on her side, the blankets pooled around her waist. One hand rested on top of Belhadron's chest, and in the faint moonlight, the scars looked like veins of silver.

She smiled, and shut the door on them. She would let them sleep.

 _The song that Belhadron sings has actually been written, and it's the same song that he sings in the story Surviving Peace. I do have it somewhere on my computer, and have actually been meaning to translate it into Elvish for a while, but to do that I need to actually finish learning Elvish (Quenya, technically) and I don't have the time right now to do so._

 _As always, reviews are very welcome. Hope anyone who got exam results this week has achieved what they wanted to! See you all next Saturday._


	9. 8: Lights in the Fountain (Part Seven)

**We Can Make It If We Run**

 **Chapter Eight: Lights in the Fountain**

 **Part Seven**

 _Okay, so life has been crazy recently. I am so sorry that I have gone so long without updating, but I wasn't getting much interest in this and I've been working a lot recently- ten hour days for a few days each week, and then more mornings and afternoons throughout the week- whilst also trying to get ready for university (I leave in two weeks) and this just slipped off the list of things I had to do. So I apologise for that. And to the guest who asked in a review, nope, I'm not dead ;)_

 _Because this story within the sequel hasn't been getting much interest (probably because it's all OCs at the moment, and I know that's harder to engage with if you don't know the OCs that well) I've decided to just publish the rest of the story in its entirety tonight. The chapter after this will return to Legolas and Thranduil (as well as my two OCs). Because of how crazy my life has been I've had far less time to write than I would like. What this means is that this sequel will most likely not be updated weekly- I have a few stories for it in progress, but only a oneshot finished. So for the first time, one of my published works will not have a strict updating schedule. I will update when I finish the smaller stories, which will be as soon as I can, but please bear in mind that my life is going to get very hectic very quickly when I start university._

 _Thank you all for your patience. Here's the rest of Belhadron and Rhavaniel's story. As always, reviews are very welcome._

 _0-o-0-o-0_

"Is anyone in the village a healer?"

Rhavaniel thought for a moment, and then shook her head. "Not an active one, and not one experienced with battlefield injuries," she replied. "I'll add it to the list." She tentatively picked up the quill with her left hand, and scratched down a few wobbly words.

Belhadron glanced at the parchment. "It's legible," he said with a soft grin. "Only just, but you're getting there." Rhavaniel snorted, and her hand clenched around the quill. Her right one was not yet strong enough to handle something as delicate as writing, so she was training her left hand. It was slow progress.

"So we'll talk to the healers when we get back," Belhadron mused, spinning an unused quill between his fingers. "They can give you exercises to improve your hand and arm, and keep an eye on everything. What's next?"

Rhavaniel thought for a moment. "Getting back into fighting shape," she said. "I've had a month off. I want you to start training with me. No sparring yet, that should wait until we get home and talk to the healers, but everything else, I need to get back to."

Belhadron huffed a laugh. "Are you sure you want me training with you?" he asked. "I won't be easy on you."

"Precisely why I asked," Rhavaniel replied with a grin. "I wouldn't expect any less." She tapped the quill against the table. "That's everything immediate," she murmured. "What else?"

"We might want to think long term," Belhadron suggested. "I don't think there's any call for you to step down as captain due to your injuries. If you want to step down, then that's another thing entirely and not anything to do with me or my decision, but I know your job is a lot more than just fighting."

Rhavaniel nodded. "I can restructure the command of my people a little," she suggested. "At the moment, we're just keeping an eye on everything and rebuilding the ranks, so we're not too pressed. When we get back I can promote a few of my best. There are already some who have taken my place on any missions, but I can make it more permanent until we know about my arm." She paused, taking a few minutes to write it down as the next thing on her list.

"Speaking of command," Belhadron mused. "It might be time to change things a little." He leant back in his chair, spinning the quill in his fingers. "I know your company is different, but I've been thinking that the chain of command is too singular in the rest of our companies, even in the rest of our army. One person answers to another, who answers to another, and so on. You know we've been in difficult situations before because word has been passed through too many people."

Rhavaniel nodded. "But you're thinking way ahead," she pointed out. "I know in my company there are different groups that are responsible for slightly different things, and sometimes the chain of command is a little blurred, but we're spies. We work in the shadows and the dark places where a chain of command isn't going to save your life. Asking regular soldiers to operate like that, without knowing quite who they have to follow, is risky."

Belhadron shrugged. "Something to think about," he replied. "I wasn't thinking of going that far, at least not with the regular army. Our elite companies could use a little change, I think, if only to keep them alert. But it can wait."

"It _will_ wait," Rhavaniel corrected with a grin. "We have enough going on without restructuring the entire working army because you are bored." Belhadron huffed a laugh and rolled his eyes, but nodded.

The door to the kitchen was pushed open, and the smell of fresh bread drifted in from the bakery. Rhavaniel's grandmother appeared in the doorway. Even though it was just dawn, and Rhavaniel and Belhadron had only woken less than an hour ago, she already had loaves of bread cooling in the winter air, and the soft voices from outside suggested people were already buying the first loaves. She put another roll on the table in front of them.

"Eat," she said, though a smile curved her lips as she looked down at the two of them, sat close together by the fire. "If you must do work when you are meant to be on rest, at least do it on a full stomach."

Belhadron grinned sheepishly, but ripped open the roll. "We're just planning," Rhavaniel said. She reached for the quill again, but Belhadron snuck a piece of bread underneath her hand. Rhavaniel's hand closed around it and she nearly tried to dip it in the inkpot before realising it was not, in fact, her quill.

Belhadron snorted in amusement at the frown on her face, and threw up a piece of bread, catching it in his mouth. Rhavaniel's grandmother promptly swatted him around the head. "Not in my house," she chided, though there was a smile on her face as Belhadron mumbled an apology. Rhavaniel rolled her eyes, and ate her half of the roll.

"Enough planning for now," her grandmother said. "I'd like both of you to come with me to visit a friend in the village."

Rhavaniel glanced up, looked at her face, and then merely nodded. "Come on," she said to Belhadron, nudging him when he didn't immediately get up. "Let's go. Once she's decided something like this, there's nothing that will change her mind."

"You know me so well," her grandmother said with a smile, pressing a kiss to Rhavaniel's temple as she stood. "Grab your cloaks, it's cold out. Belhadron, pick up the bottle of mulled wine as a gift."

They walked through the village as it woke, the winter sun casting long shadows that stretched out across the green. The fountain was frozen, frost glinting off the old stone rim.

Rhavaniel's grandmother led them to a small house nestled amongst the trees at the north of the central green. Rhavaniel's gaze ran over the house; it was neat and well kept, if small. At her grandmother's knock, an elf answered the door.

He was young, probably only just come to age, and had a large smile across his face that looked like it was there more often than not. "Amred," Rhavaniel's grandmother said warmly. "This is Rhavaniel, and Belhadron."

"Of course," Amred said with a smile, greeting both of them. "Come in, come on in."

There was a fire burning in the hearth. Amred shoved some of the clutter to one end of the table. "Apologies for this," he said with another smile. "My little sister is only eight, and has not yet grasped how things need to be put away when finished with."

There was small talk for a few minutes, idle chatter over unimportant things. Finally Rhavaniel's grandmother stood from the table, giving Amred a meaningful look. Rhavaniel and Belhadron exchanged a wary glance.

"Are your parents around?" Rhavaniel's grandmother asked. Amred nodded, and waved a hand towards the back of the house. She left the three of them alone.

Amred rubbed the back of his neck, smiling sheepishly. "Your grandmother always does scare me a little," he said.

Belhadron snorted softly. "That makes two of us," he murmured. "I suppose that there is a specific reason she brought us to visit today?"

"Ah," Amred said. "Yes." He shifted, looking at the both of them with the type of unguarded expression that only the young could have. "You don't remember me, do you?"

Rhavaniel blinked, and glanced at Belhadron, who shook his head. "I'm sorry," she said. "We don't. You might look vaguely familiar, but it's only passing." She made it her business to know anyone who she deemed was important, but there existed far too many elves in their realm for her to know them all.

"It's all right," Amred said with an honest smile. "No offence, but to people of your standing, captains, I am very unimportant. I'm not being rude!" he said quickly. "But it is true. The two of you are far too important to think about the likes of me. Even you, spymaster."

Rhavaniel leant back in her chair, and arched a brow. "How do you know that?" she asked. Amred smiled sheepishly again.

"I'd better get started on the story," he said. "And it will make sense later on, I hope." He seemed to be unable to sit still, shifting around some of the clutter on the table until Belhadron coughed, and he managed to still for a moment.

"So I have only lived here for the past ten years," Amred said. "My family and I moved around a bit, but for the first fifteen or so years of my life, I lived in one of the former southern settlements." At Belhadron and Rhavaniel's expressions, he laughed nervously. "I know, bear with me. This will make sense."

"Anyway, I lived in one of the settlements to the southwest with my parents. It was a quiet life, until one day, when I was woken in the middle of the night to screams and the clash of steel."

"The orcs burnt the village down, or tried, at least." Rhavaniel flinched, and Amred smiled apologetically. "I'm sorry," he said to her. "I'm aware that such a thing is a little too personal for you, perhaps. I will try to be brief." Rhavaniel inclined her head in thanks, and Belhadron shifted a little closer to her. He was well aware of how she had lost her parents.

"I don't remember much of it," Amred confessed. "But somehow I got trapped in the house. Everything was burning. I could hear screams outside, the harsh cries of orcs. And then I heard the ring of steel."

"I didn't know what was happening outside. I was probably shouting out, but I mostly remember how I couldn't see anything, how the smoke was blinding me. I remember thinking, at that point, that I was going to die."

A small smile slipped onto Amred's face. "And suddenly, the door was kicked down, and then there were two elves silhouetted against the flames outside. They both had scarves covering the lower half of their faces and weapons in their hands. I didn't know what to do, was paralysed with fear, so one of them ran forwards into the burning building and carried me out."

Rhavaniel frowned, and Amred huffed a soft laugh. "You will probably work out where I am going with this soon enough," he said to her. "But if you don't mind, I'd like to finish the story." Rhavaniel nodded, shrugging when Belhadron shot her a confused glance.

"The two warriors set me down behind the line they'd set up," Amred continued. "And joined the fight again. That bit I remember in flashes of bright steel cutting through smoke, but I didn't look away from the two elves who had saved me."

"I was just a child. When the fires began to spread, one of those elves suddenly appeared, picked me up, and ran. He didn't stop running until we were safe. I remember looking up at him, at a smoke-stained face half covered in a scarf, at the bright sword in his hand, and being terrified."

"The other elf turned up then, just as terrifying, but she stood guard over the two of us, and then the first warrior pulled the scarf down, wiping away the smoke stains, and he smiled. He told me both of their names, told me that his little brother had been my age once and that he would look after me. The other told me that she was the King's spymaster and nothing could get past her, or stop her finding my parents."

Rhavaniel looked over at Belhadron's sudden intake of breath. Amred nodded. "I was young, and it was eighty years ago, but I don't forget the faces of the two people who saved my life."

"My family moved around afterwards," Amred continued. "I won't bother you with the details, but we came here about ten years ago. Your grandmother mentioned your name in passing, and it didn't take me too long to piece things together." He smiled wryly. "Your grandmother talks about the both of you a lot more than you'd probably think."

"Why tell us this?" Rhavaniel asked softly.

"Because I have heard the rumours and the stories," Amred replied steadily. "I have heard what happened at Erebor. And no matter what your grandmother says about this being her idea, this was my story, and I tell it to you gladly."

"The two of you saved my life," he said softly. "I owe you a debt that can never be repaid, as do many other people in this realm. I thought, perhaps after everything you've come through, it wouldn't do you any harm for you to be reminded of just how much good you have done."

Belhadron swallowed thickly. Next to him, Rhavaniel shuddered. He reached over blindly and found her hand, lacing his fingers with hers and gripping it tightly.

"Thank you," was all that he could say. Words about how Amred didn't owe them anything, how they were just doing their jobs, died on his lips. Rhavaniel squeezed his hand sharply, but one look at her face and Belhadron knew it was more to keep herself together than him.

Amred noticed and he smiled, open and honest. "I know I can't really understand what you have been through," he said. "I am no soldier, and I never will be. But I really did want to tell you my story, and I hope it helped."

Rhavaniel nodded. "It did," she murmured. "Thank you." Amred, with a wide smile and a nod, got up from the table and headed out of the room, leaving the two of them alone.

Belhadron bowed his head, and Rhavaniel squeezed his hand. "My grandmother is a terrifying woman," she muttered. Belhadron looked at her, and then barked a rough laugh that was nearly a sob. Rhavaniel freed her hand and wrapped an arm around him.

"He's done well," was all that she said, nodding at the door where Amred had disappeared.

"So did we," Belhadron replied, wiping at the tears on his face. He leant into her touch, pulling himself together once again.

There was a knowing smile on her face when, a few minutes later, Rhavaniel's grandmother came back into the room. They stayed for a while longer, talking with Amred and his parents. His little sister was enraptured with Rhavaniel, deciding to sit on her lap and play with the bandages around her arm for most of the time they were there, until Belhadron rescued her.

Finally they left, Amred seeing them to the door. Rhavaniel's grandmother said nothing as they walked back through the village, only fixing them with a piercing gaze and then nodding, as if what she saw met her satisfaction.

Belhadron watched as a couple walked past and greeted them with unhurried smiles, stopping to talk to Rhavaniel's grandmother for a few moments over absolutely nothing of importance. He felt a touch at his side, and then Rhavaniel linked her arm with his. There was an odd smile on her face.

"It's strange, isn't it?" she said. "How inconsequential everything is here. How nothing anybody does is really important, and yet because of that, it is all so very precious."

"I can't quite tell if what I feel is envy or just grief," Belhadron murmured. Rhavaniel looked at him questioningly. "For us," he elaborated. "Because we shouldn't find this strange."

They were silent for a few moments, walking arm in arm back through the village. Belhadron watched a child swing from a tree, another standing at the roots and jumping to try and catch her arms. "I suppose it's good, though," he mused. "Being reminded."

"Of what?" Rhavaniel asked, though she knew perfectly what he was going to say. Belhadron huffed a low laugh.

"What we fought for, of course," he replied. "What we're still fighting for." He looked over at the elflings, the both of them now running across branches, twigs tangled in their hair and mud over their clothes, and he smiled at the sight.

0-o-0-o-0

They had a few easier days after that. Rhavaniel went running with Belhadron in the mornings, and they spent hours doing whatever they could come up with that would help her arm heal. She spent a lot of her time in the bakery kneading and shaping dough. The first few loaves were a mess, shapeless and with lumps of flour in them, but Belhadron ate them anyway with a laugh, or at least tried to before nearly choking on flour.

It didn't make everything suddenly better, and they both knew that it wouldn't. It was easier, with the two of them working together again, but it was nowhere near over.

Belhadron had a nightmare that was bad enough to make him throw up, and Rhavaniel spent hours quietly talking with him until he fell back to sleep. Two days later, Rhavaniel became so frustrated by everything that she threw her inkpot at Belhadron when he accidentally pushed her over the edge, and it was only his quick reflexes that stopped him from being knocked out or adding another wound to the lost list of those he'd sustained in service of his realm.

It had been a week since they'd arrived in the village, and the day dawned cold. Rhavaniel pushed open the door and came into the house, shaking the droplets of water from her hair. It had just started to rain, and the soft sound of rain pattered on the roof over her head, a soft accompaniment to the sound of the fire crackling in the hearth. She smiled, undoing her cloak with one hand and ignoring the throb of pain from her arm, that didn't seem to like the cold much.

There was the sound of startled laughter from the bakery, and the chatter of voices. Rhavaniel recognised Belhadron's voice, but couldn't make out what he was saying. She kicked her boots off, exchanging them for soft shoes that wouldn't track mud all over the house, and headed for the door to the bakery.

Belhadron looked up when she came in, and Rhavaniel stuttered to a stop. "What?" she managed to get out. "What did you do?"

Belhadron seemed to be in the centre of a cloud of chaos. There was flour in his hair and covering his tunic, and more across the table. A bowl was still clattering to a stop on the floor, the sharp clack of ceramic against the stone floor the only sound in the room. Belhadron grinned sheepishly.

"I don't know!" he said, throwing his hands, and more flour, up into the air. "We were just…I was just talking, and the next thing I know, I'm somehow attempting to make bread. And this happened. I have no idea how I got here."

Rhavaniel blinked, taking in the chaos in front of her. Her grandmother was leaning against the wall, a small smile on her face. Belhadron was watching her, looking thoroughly confused and a bit embarrassed.

Rhavaniel couldn't help it. She burst out laughing, doubling over and clutching at the edge of the table in a bid to keep herself on her feet. "Look at this!" she choked out in between bursts of laughter. "What have you done?"

Belhadron's face lit up, and a laugh spilled from his lips. "It's not my fault!" he protested half-heartedly, but his attention remained on Rhavaniel, and he stared at her, as if captivated by something only he could see.

Rhavaniel leant against the table, laughing breathlessly, and the smile gradually grew on Belhadron's face as she slumped over, resting on the wood that was covered in flour, gasping for breath. He walked around the table, trying to dust off some of the flour, and then out of nowhere, swept her up into a massive hug.

Rhavaniel shrieked as Belhadron lifted her off her feet and swung her around, thoroughly coating her in flour as well. "What's this for?" she cried, grabbing onto the edge of the table to try and stop him swinging her around. Belhadron laughed, flicking flour in her face.

"I've missed that laugh," he murmured. Rhavaniel's feet weren't even scraping the floor, but she wrapped her arms around his neck and rested her head on his shoulder. Belhadron laughed again, a deep purr in his chest, and Rhavaniel grinned.

She suddenly swept up a handful of flour and shoved it down the back of Belhadron's shirt. Belhadron yelped and dropped her as he pulled at his shirt. "You… you are evil!" he gasped as the flour trickled down his back. "Why?"

Rhavaniel shrugged. "It was such an appealing idea," she said with a grin. Belhadron studied her, and then a slow smile spread across his face. Rhavaniel took a step back.

"Don't you dare," she warned him as Belhadron stalked around the table, reaching for a bowl of flour that was still intact. "Don't even think about it." She stepped back, putting the table between herself and Belhadron. Belhadron had a dark grin on his face and Rhavaniel's gaze darted around the room, looking for something she could defend herself with.

"I have killed countless of orcs and spiders," she said as Belhadron stepped around the table slowly. "I have been in the darkest areas of this realm and I have survived and come out stronger. I have treaded the paths to Dol Guldur. I am the spymaster, I am myth and rumour and secrets. You do not want to do this."

Belhadron grinned sharply. "Oh, I rather think I do," he purred. He stilled, a lethal tension set within him, and Rhavaniel eyed him warily.

Belhadron suddenly lunged forwards, vaulting over the table and tackling Rhavaniel. Rhavaniel let herself fall and twisted, slipping his hold and ducking out of his grasp. She tried to scramble to her feet and run, but Belhadron grabbed her leg and pulled her down, pinning her to the floor. With a wicked grin, he reached up and grabbed the bowl of flour.

Rhavaniel twisted underneath him, a laugh escaping her lips as Belhadron held the bowl threateningly over her. She kicked her legs up and threw herself to one side and Belhadron, caught a little off guard, fell sideways. The bowl in his hand wobbled alarmingly and then tipped over.

The flour went everywhere. Belhadron slowly paled as Rhavaniel opened her eyes. Her face was covered in flour, her hair nearly white. She wiped some of the flour of her face and glared up at him.

Belhadron gulped. "Would you believe me if I said I actually didn't mean to do that?"

Rhavaniel levelled him with a very unimpressed look. "Not in the slightest," she replied. "I am going to kill you. They will never find your body."

"You'll have to catch me first," Belhadron said through a grin. Rhavaniel growled at him, and then suddenly bucked up, twisting her body and swinging up her arms to catch Belhadron in a lock. Belhadron only just scrambled away in time, pulling himself out of her hold with sheer strength and a bit of luck. They tussled on the floor for a few minutes, Rhavaniel employing a few of her tricks that didn't result in death or serious injury to keep Belhadron off his feet. Belhadron was laughing too hard to really try and get away from her, and he ended up sprawled on his back as Rhavaniel flicked flour into his face.

There came a cough from Rhavaniel's grandmother, who was leaning still against the wall. "If you could act your age," she said dryly, though a smile tugged at her lips. "Belhadron, your bread needs to come out the oven. And all this needs clearing up." She looked them over. "As do the both of you, I think."

Rhavaniel laughed and got up, offering a hand and hauling Belhadron to his feet. "Get your bread," she said, shoving him lightly towards the ovens. "I'll get a broom."

She was heading for the door when she felt the blast of heat from the ovens being opened, and then the familiar smell of spices curled around her. She spun on her heel to see Belhadron, wincing at the heat, pulling a spiced loaf out of the oven.

He turned to see her standing there, and a warm smile slowly curled his lips as he put the rich, dark loaf down on the counter. "It's your favourite, isn't it?" he asked. "Whenever the cooks make it in the winter it's gone before anyone else can get their hands on it." He shrugged. "I thought I'd give it a go."

Rhavaniel blinked, and then walked steadily forwards to grab Belhadron and pull him into a fierce embrace. "Thank you," she murmured against his shoulder.

Belhadron hugged her back, and there was a smile on his lips as he spoke. "It's the least I can do," he replied. "Besides, I am a terrible baker, so it probably won't be that good anyway."

"We can fix that," Rhavaniel said, a soft laugh colouring her own voice. "We have the time."

0-o-0-o-0

"We're going to be late."

Rhavaniel rolled her eyes. "We can turn up whenever we want to, and leave whenever we want to," she said, a grin on her lips. "It's not that formal."

Belhadron huffed. "I don't think I've been to anything other than the King's feasts for decades," he muttered, his voice muffled around the hairpin he was holding between his teeth. He teased out another lock of Rhavaniel's hair, adding it to the braid in his hand. "Will there be wine?"

"Nothing as good as what the King has," Rhavaniel replied with a grin, glancing over her shoulder. "But we don't really get to drink that anyway. Are you finished yet?"

"If you would stay still, then perhaps I might be," Belhadron shot back, but his voice was coloured with a grin. Rhavaniel's shoulders shook with a muted laugh, but she stayed still.

Belhadron found himself smiling as he braided her hair. It was a good day, so far. Rhavaniel had asked him to do her hair without a second thought, and had even laughed, if only a little, over the state of her braid when she had tried to do it with her hand. Yesterday she had become so frustrated with the buttons on her shirt that she had actually ripped them off, and Belhadron had only just managed to duck out of the way when she had thrown them at him.

As Rhavaniel's grandmother kept reminding them, they had been through the wars, quite literally, and it would take a while to come back from it. But things were, for the moment, getting better.

Belhadron took the hairpin out of his mouth, and finished off Rhavaniel's hair. "Done," he said. Rhavaniel gingerly patted it, and nodded. She turned to him, spreading her arms.

"What do you think?" she asked. The heavy skirts of her simple green dress swished around her as she turned, glinting in the firelight from the hearth. Belhadron nodded.

"You still look deadly to me," he said, and grinned when Rhavaniel laughed. He toed at her skirts. "Do you have a knife strapped to your leg?"

"Don't be ridiculous," Rhavaniel scoffed. "It's in my shoe instead."

Belhadron laughed, a low purr in his chest. "How much harder is it to kill someone in that dress?" he asked.

"More difficult than it would be to kill someone in your clothes," Rhavaniel replied. "There's a reason, surprisingly, why I don't wear these types of clothes for work." She tugged at the stiff collar of Belhadron's jacket. It was dark leather, dyed black but almost blue in the firelight, with veins of silver in the collar and the cuffs. Belhadron fiddled with the collar, and Rhavaniel batted his hands away.

"You look very sophisticated," she said with a grin. "Stop messing with the jacket." Belhadron glared at her half-heartedly, but Rhavaniel just ignored him and fixed his cloak around his shoulders. "Are we ready to go?"

Belhadron nodded, and offered her his arm. The paths through the village were lit with lanterns, and ribbons hung from the trees the closer they got to the green. As they got closer they could hear the crackle of a bonfire and the soft music already playing.

By the time they arrived, most of the village was already there, eating or drinking or dancing, or some combination of the three. Belhadron and Rhavaniel slipped into the crowd easily enough, threading their way through the groups of people. The fountain was gurgling merrily, and someone had set small, intricate lanterns in and around it, so that the water looked as if someone had trapped a flame within it.

"I'll go and get us something to drink," Belhadron said, taking back his arm and weaving his way through the crowd. Rhavaniel watched him go, absent-mindedly flexing her hand. It took some thought, some long conversations with Belhadron in the early hours of the morning, and even longer conversations with herself, but she was trying hard not to think of her arm as ruined.

She would not be ruined.

There was the soft rustle of cloth, and then her grandmother appeared beside her. Her gaze tracked Belhadron as he stepped through the crowd. "That is a very nice jacket," she murmured.

Rhavaniel arched a brow at her, and her grandmother smiled sharply. "I may be old, but I am not blind. And especially not to a figure like his, which is just so well accentuated in that jacket."

Rhavaniel choked on a laugh. "I don't have anything to say in response to that," she replied. Her grandmother hummed softly, glancing from Belhadron to her.

"The two of you," she murmured. "There could be, there should be, far more than there is."

Rhavaniel shook her head. "I've told you this already," she said. "We are perpetually at war, and we've both agreed that it will not go any further with that hanging over our heads."

Her grandmother arched a brow. "I could say a lot about that decision, but it's not mine to make, so I will leave it for now. But the war will not last forever. It never does."

Rhavaniel scoffed. "Please," she said, her voice a little bitter. "You and I both know, as does Belhadron, that the greatest war of this Age is coming, and it is coming quickly. Eighty years or so, and it will be upon us. I don't know if either Belhadron or I will live through it, but there is a good chance we won't. And I won't risk it."

Her grandmother said nothing for a few moments, watching the people move around them, talking and laughing, at ease in this small village that was a world away from the stronghold and war.

"This could be your life," she murmured eventually.

Rhavaniel glanced over at her, raising a brow. Her grandmother smiled slightly. "You could walk away," she said. "I'm not saying whether you should or not, because it's not my decision in any way, but you could. Both of you could. The option is there."

Rhavaniel shook her head. "Belhadron never would," she replied. "Not whilst Legolas is still tied to his duty. And since Legolas is tied to his duty for his entire life, due to his birth, so Belhadron will stay by his side. He wouldn't abandon Legolas like that."

"And you?" her grandmother asked. "You have given enough. There is no shame in walking away after everything you have done."

Rhavaniel inclined her head. "But I am needed," she said.

"Does that matter?" her grandmother asked sharply. Rhavaniel almost laughed.

"Of course it does," she replied. "I am beholden to more than myself. So are Belhadron and Legolas, so is everyone who fights in this war." She tucked a lock of hair that had escaped her braid behind her ear, and smiled slightly. "I won't walk away. Not until my job is done."

"Fair enough," her grandmother replied, inclining her head. "I thought the same, before I did decide to walk away, and that was the hardest thing I've ever had to do." She looked over at Rhavaniel. "You should know that I am very proud of you," she said. "I don't know which is more courageous, walking away or staying to fight, but I am so proud of you."

Rhavaniel ducked her head with a smile. When she looked up her grandmother was gone from her side, silent footsteps that were a habit left over from long years of service. Belhadron appeared a moment later, two glasses of wine in his hands. He handed one to Rhavaniel.

"What was that about?" he asked, taking a sip of the wine as they stood beside the fountain. Rhavaniel laughed softly.

"She wanted to know whether I would leave," she replied. "Or gave me the option, at least."

"What did you say?"

Belhadron's voice was carefully guarded as he turned to look at her, and there was undisguised worry on his face. Rhavaniel smiled softly, and linked her arm with his.

"I told her no, of course," she replied. She let out a breath. "And here's a thought for free, as it were."

"When I was a child and my village burnt," she said quietly. "When my parents shouted at me to run and I did, leaving them behind, and they died, that hurt like nothing else I've ever felt. There's nothing compared to losing them. You know what I mean. You lost your brother."

Belhadron nodded, his eyes searching her face as if he could find the way to ease that pain, a raw edge akin to his own, dulled by long centuries but never faded. Rhavaniel squeezed his arm slightly. He meant well, but it was not his pain to ease.

"I coped," she said, remembering the years after, as a ward of the realm, the years that first put her feet on the path they were treading now. "I survived, and I've had a long life since then. I came to terms with all of it a while ago, worked things out with my remaining family, and most of the time I can think of them with fondness and only a little ache."

"Everything that happened, everything I've been through and I've done..." She trailed off. "In the past few weeks I sometimes would wake up, still wake up, and feel like I am that child again, torn apart and adrift. That pain comes back all too easily, when that happens. And I forget what I should never let slip my mind."

Belhadron's hand tightened on her arm, and Rhavaniel looked up at him. She grinned, a ruthless smile curling her lips and a fey light glinting in her eyes. "I survived it all. I'm still here. And I've come too far to turn back now."

Belhadron barked a laugh, and something in his face eased as he smiled back at her. Rhavaniel set down her glass of wine as a new song started up. "Would you like to dance?" she offered, extending her hand. In the light of the lanterns and the moon above her head, the scars were veins of silver as Belhadron took her hand.

0-o-0-o-0

Their remaining few days passed quickly, and all too soon Rhavaniel found herself attempting to pack with only one hand. After a few attempts at folding a shirt, she merely shoved all the clothes into the bag and tugged it roughly shut. If Belhadron was bothered by it, he could fold them himself.

Belhadron was already at the kitchen table, various saddlebags piled up and spilling open as he finished packing. Rhavaniel dumped her bag on the table, and sighed when she saw Belhadron eyeing it with a glare.

"Do you know how difficult it is to fold clothes with one hand?" she asked.

"Actually, I do," Belhadron shot back. "Remember when my horse was taken down by spiders and I was thrown? My arm was in a sling for two months after that, so whilst I don't know what your situation is like, I do have some idea." He looked down at the bag again. "One of the agreements we worked out is that you will try and ask for help when you need it, and not go silent." They'd worked out many possible promises over the past week, things both of them would try and do. Rhavaniel scraped her hand through her hair, and sighed.

"Fine," she snapped. She looked up at Belhadron, put on a sickly sweet voice and batted her eyelashes. "If it's not too much trouble, my wonderful friend who has two working hands, could you possibly pack my bag for me? It would mean so much to me if you could just fold my clothes-"

Belhadron cut her off with a glare that slowly faded into a grin. "Fine, I get it," he muttered. "But do you actually want me to back your bag?" Rhavaniel huffed a laugh, and pushed her bag towards Belhadron. She knew Belhadron would just fuss over it until she let him, and couldn't be bothered to draw it out to annoy him. Besides, they had agreed that she would try and ask for help when needed, if Belhadron would try not to do everything for her before being asked.

They were ready to leave before midday, bags packed and horses ready. Belhadron swung his cloak around his shoulders. "Thank you for allowing me to stay," he said, turning to Rhavaniel's family, who were gathered to see them off.

"As if we would do anything else," Rhavaniel's aunt said with a smile, coming forwards to say goodbye. She embraced Rhavaniel, kissing her cheek, and tugged Belhadron into a hug. "You are welcome at any time, especially if you keep working in my forge." Belhadron had helped out, for something to do, and Rhavaniel's aunt had seen a remarkable increase in the number of women stopping by to talk about seemingly unimportant things whilst he was working. She almost pitied them, because to her it was painfully obvious that he didn't have eyes for anyone but Rhavaniel.

Rhavaniel's uncle stepped forwards to bid them both farewell, and then her grandmother, a small smile on her face. "You will always be welcome here, child, no matter what," she said to Belhadron. "You are family, and nothing less."

Rhavaniel huffed a laugh. "I've only been telling him that for decades," she said, nudging Belhadron in the ribs. He slung an arm around her shoulders with a grin.

"Thank you," he said earnestly, Rhavaniel echoing him. "For everything."

Rhavaniel's grandmother simply smiled. "I am glad to have helped," she replied. "We all are." She took Rhavaniel's hand and squeezed it. "Go on, get going. You've got lives to get back to."

They left the village behind in the morning light, riding out under the bare branches of the archway and into the forest. Rhavaniel twisted in her saddle, glancing back at the village and allowing herself that one brief moment of nostalgia as she watched the houses fade into the trees.

"I always miss walking away," she murmured. "Just for a moment." She saw the worried look that Belhadron tried to keep off his face, and rolled her eyes. "Don't get worried," she said, punching him in the arm. "I'm not going back. I've come way too far to do that."

"I'm fairly sure the realm wouldn't survive a month without you," Belhadron said with a grin. "I know Legolas wouldn't. The only reason he can outdo all of the advisors and councillors in court is because of all the information that you pass onto him."

Rhavaniel huffed a laugh. "I don't think we'd survive long without you either, for what it's worth," she replied. "You're the only one who can really get Legolas to take a break and look after himself, and honestly, sometimes Legolas is the only thing holding us all together."

Belhadron snorted in amusement. "He really is," he muttered. He thought for a few seconds. "We need to keep an eye on him when we get back. Remind me to drag him out for a few hunting trips when we have the time." They wouldn't actually be hunting trips, but an excuse to get away from the stronghold, and they both knew it.

"Will you say anything to Thranduil?" Rhavaniel asked. Belhadron had, on occasion, gone straight to Thranduil when Legolas wouldn't listen to him and he couldn't get him to stop working and take a break. It always annoyed Legolas, but Belhadron didn't care much if he could stop Legolas from pushing himself to the point of utter exhaustion.

He shrugged. "Probably, if it comes to that," he said. "It would be so much easier if I could just pull rank on him."

Rhavaniel shot a look at him. "Can't you?" she asked. Belhadron frowned, and a grin curled the corner of her lips. "I know about your standing arrangement with Thranduil," she said. "How you have orders from him that, if the situation is dire enough, you can override Legolas' commands and act how you see fit. I also know you've enacted this a few times, including at Erebor."

"How do you know that?" Belhadron asked. "Thranduil and I know, of course, and I told Legolas after the first time I acted on those orders, but beyond that, nobody knows."

Rhavaniel arched a brow. "Don't question my methods, just know that they work," she said mysteriously. Belhadron choked on a laugh, and shook his head.

"I never question your methods," he replied. "Not after I've watched quite a few of them. I'd be too scared." He shook his head. "Honestly, I'm a little worried about Legolas. He always does this, always puts everything aside in his mind until everything is mostly back to normal, and only then realises he's exhausted himself."

"You could write to Elladan and Elrohir," Rhavaniel suggested. "If you ask, I am sure they will take Legolas to Imladris with them, with his agreement or not."

"You know as well as I do that Legolas can't go anywhere until things are back to normal," Belhadron pointed out. "Besides, Legolas' last letters from Elladan and Elrohir said that they were going to ride out with the Rangers for six months, so even if I sent a letter now, they might not be back in Imladris."

"Once they hear what has happened they'll come over the mountains to us," Rhavaniel said. "And then they can take Legolas out for a few days to give him some time off. Thranduil can't object, at least not as much as if the both of you went, because you'll stay to take command."

Belhadron shivered. "You know I hate it when you put it like that," he muttered. He was Legolas' second in command, but when Legolas wasn't at his position, Belhadron was the one who took his place and was in charge. Rhavaniel had more experience than him, but her company was apart from most of the army, and Thranduil preferred to not have her tied down by mundane duties in case she was needed for something. That meant that if Legolas was absent, the command fell to Belhadron.

Rhavaniel hit him in the arm again. "You are a perfectly good commander, and you know it," she said. "I think Thranduil might offer you a lordship again, by the way. You should take it."

Belhadron shrugged. "It's not like I need it," he replied. "I don't want to be promoted, I don't need land because I live in the stronghold, and I don't even need money because what would I spend it on? Besides, all of the councillors who dislike me because a Silvan elf has the ear of their Sindarin Prince would just have another excuse to complain about me."

"You should accept just to spite them, then," Rhavaniel replied with a ruthless grin. "It would be fun."

"I'm sure it would be," Belhadron muttered, rolling his eyes. "For you to watch. I don't like playing those games quite as much as you do." He suddenly smiled. "I'll make a deal with you," he said. "I'll accept my lordship, if it is offered, if you accept the title Thranduil will try to offer to you as well."

Rhavaniel started. "Fine, no titles," she groused, and Belhadron let out a bark of laughter as they rode home.

They stayed with Belhadron's parents that night, on their way home, and though there were no heartfelt declarations of anyone's mistakes or shortcomings, it was easier, and Belhadron found himself struck by what could have been, had the world worked differently.

He said as much to Rhavaniel, and she, surprisingly, laughed. "Our lives could have gone in a thousand different directions," she told him. "You know better than to get caught in what could have been."

Before long, it was morning, and they were readying to leave once again. "Are you packed?" Belhadron asked as he came through the door into the kitchen.

Rhavaniel rolled her eyes. "I barely unpacked," she said, putting her bags down by the door. She looked up as Belhadron came inside, and abruptly had to stifle a laugh. "What happened to you?"

Belhadron glowered, and tried to brush the mud off his shirt. "Your horse hates me," he replied. "But they're ready to go."

"There's rain coming in from the east, it looks like," said Belhadron's father as he came into the kitchen, setting a basket of logs down by the hearth. "You'll probably want to leave soon to avoid the worst of it."

Belhadron nodded. "We should get moving, then," he said to Rhavaniel. "Can you take the last of the bags out to the horses?"

Rhavaniel nodded, and swiped the bags off the table, slipping out of the room. Belhadron's father watched her go. "The two of you…" he said slowly. At Belhadron's questioning gaze, he shook his head with a small smile curving his lips. "I've always liked her, you know," he said. "Even though your mother and I may not agree with the system that you are both a part of, I do like her." He shrugged slightly. "The two of you are good together."

Belhadron echoed his shrug. "I suppose we are," he murmured, checking his quiver. His father gripped his shoulder, and he looked up.

"I know it's not the easiest, when you're here," his father said softly. "I know all of this, after your brother… It can be difficult. But I am- both of us, we are so glad to see you alive and unharmed." His hand slipped from Belhadron's shoulder, who nodded. He was well aware that his father wouldn't say much more, but at least this time, he didn't need to.

0-o-0-o-0

The wind was picking up through the boughs above their heads as Belhadron brought the horses round. They checked their bags and supplies one last time, hands grazing over weapons, a comforting gesture.

Belhadron's mother paused next to Rhavaniel as she checked the bag over her shoulder. Her gaze was on Belhadron, who was talking quietly with his father.

"Look after him, will you?" Belhadron's mother said softly. Rhavaniel glanced over at her.

"Of course," she replied, her voice a mere murmur. She studied his mother for a moment. "We are healing," she said. "We are coming back from this. But it will take a while for all of us."

"I know," his mother said. "I've seen that look before, the look that both of you wear at the moment." She turned to Rhavaniel, sharp grey eyes raking across her face.

"You look better," she said softly. "Whatever was troubling you and Belhadron, it has lessened. I am glad."

Rhavaniel raised an eyebrow, and Belhadron's mother just smiled sharply. "No matter how much I resent the system, no matter how many times I think that I have had two sons taken from me instead of just one, he is still my son, and I still love him dearly." Her gaze glanced over to him. "I will always love him. But I know my faults, and I know that no matter what I want, he would never give up the life he has with you, with the Prince."

She smiled slyly. "I do not think you should give up your position, by the way," she said. "Even if your arm never fully heals. You do not need to fight, to do what you do. And you are stronger than any of those captains combined." Her tone was defiant, a sharp light in her grey eyes as she spoke, and steel that had long been laid to rest rose in her voice.

Rhavaniel blinked, wondering whether she had given herself away, and Belhadron's mother reached out to take her hand. "I listen to the rumours and the wind, my dear," she said with a small smile. "I know a little more about you than you might realise, and suspect yet more. And though we may have different definitions of strength, we both know what it is to endure."

"We do," murmured Rhavaniel. She studied Belhadron's mother, and saw for perhaps the first time the steel core that she bore, despite her hands never having touched a blade.

They rode away, and this time it was Belhadron twisting in his saddle, watching until the small settlement disappeared from his sight. His eyes stayed on the trees behind them for a moment longer, before he cleared his throat and turned back to their path, pulling his cloak tighter around his shoulders. "Let's go home," he murmured, and with a nudge of his heels he pushed his horse forwards. Rhavaniel watched him for a moment, a small smile curling her lips, before she followed.

The sun was falling in the sky, and the light around them slowly fading, by the time they came through the woods and saw the stronghold before them. Rhavaniel urged her horse on, cantering down the familiar tracks and clattering into one of the courtyards. The torches were lit, bright against the darkening trees, and grooms stepped forwards to take their horses.

Legolas was sitting on the wall just outside the gate, sharpening one of his knives. He looked up at the sound of footsteps, and a grin spread across his face.

"You look well," he said, slipping down from the wall and crossing to meet them. "Both of you."

"You look tired," Belhadron said with a frown, but it soon gave way to a smile as he pulled Legolas into an embrace. "How have things been?"

"The realm has, surprisingly, survived in your absence," Legolas replied with a wry smile, embracing Rhavaniel and pressing a kiss to her temple as she laughed. "I've also survived, which I'm sure you are glad to hear. Things are somewhat more organised, though there's still a lot to do."

Rhavaniel ducked out of Legolas' grip. "We should get started, then," she said. "Now we're home." Belhadron huffed a laugh, and slung an arm around Legolas' shoulders as the three of them turned to go inside. His other hand found Rhavaniel's and she gripped his hand as best she could, the cobweb of scars veins of gold in the torchlight.

The three of them all knew that it wasn't over, not by a long way, and that these cheerful moments were only a brief reprieve from everything that was still to come. They would all bear the scars of Erebor for a long time. But for now, they were home, and it was enough.

 _finis_

 _So yeah, that's all of it. The next chapter is a oneshot concerning mostly Legolas, Belhadron and Thranduil. I hope everyone enjoyed this, and again, I'm sorry for the delay and the unreliable updates. Just a reminder: the updates will not be regular anymore- I will update when I am able to. I know this is disappointing to a lot of you, but I just don't have the time at the moment._

 _In other news, I've decided on the next long story I am going to write- the first time Elladan and Elrohir come to Mirkwood, involving spiders, getting trapped behind enemy lines, and the beginnings of a friendship. It will take a while to be written, especially with uni in the way, but it will be done eventually (and when it is, that story will be published with regular updates)._

 _As always, reviews are very welcome. I'll see you all when I next see you._


	10. Chapter 9

**We Can Make It If We Run**

 **Chapter Eight?**

 _Wow, it's been a while. Thanks to those people who have been kind enough to check up on me, as it were- I promise I'm fine, but life has been rather hectic as I've settled in at university. I haven't actually managed to write anything for about three weeks now, I'm so busy, but now that everything is beginning to settle I have a bit more free time. Apologies for the long wait, and thank you so much to anyone who has stuck with this story._

 _I do have plans for plenty of stories, and I really want them to get written (I have this sequel to finish off, which might take a while because there's still quite a few stories to go, and then a oneshot of Legolas and Belhadron from an outside PoV that I have in my head, and then the next long story, which is the first time Elladan and Elrohir come to Mirkwood). Anyway, here's the next part of the story- this is just a oneshot, and honestly I can't remember what chapter this is now, and how I've structured things- on my laptop the word document is titled 'Chapter 2.5' because I started writing it after the second and third story, so I honestly don't know anymore._

 _I've had this idea in my head for a while now, so I hope you enjoy it. As always, reviews are very welcome. Hope everyone is having a good time._

 _0-o-0-o-0_

"Legolas."

The sound of the quill scratching on parchment paused briefly, and then started up again.

"Legolas."

This time the sound stopped. Legolas dropped the quill and shot a glare at Belhadron. "Don't you have work to do?" he asked.

"I've been off duty for an hour," Belhadron replied smartly. "As have you."

Legolas huffed, and picked up the quill again. "There's no such thing as off duty anymore, and you know that," he murmured. "Not since things started picking up again."

Belhadron almost choked on a laugh. "That's the understatement of the decade," he muttered. There had been a lull in the past few weeks, the weight lessening on their shoulders. The two weeks that Belhadron and Rhavaniel had spent back at Rhavaniel's family home had been quieter, and for a moment it had looked like the worst had passed. Of course, they had been wrong.

Spiders were being driven north by the cold weather in search of food and new territories. Leaderless bands of orcs, that had been roaming the forest since the White Council had driven the Necromancer from Dol Guldur, were now encroaching on their borders. There were not enough of them to easily cope, and they were beginning to be stretched thin once more.

Belhadron sighed, and dropped into a chair next to Legolas.

"Please, just go and eat a proper meal," he said, leaning forwards to try and catch Legolas' gaze. "And sleep for the entire night. It's not that much to ask. The realm can cope without you for a night."

"Can it?" Legolas asked, though there was more weariness than ire in his voice. "Are you sure, Belhadron? Because from everything I've seen, everything we've both seen, those quiet few weeks are over and we're back to standing on the edge once again." He shook his head, scratching down a few more lines on the parchment in front of him.

"What happens if something goes wrong and I'm not here?" he asked.

Belhadron scoffed, shoving his chair back. "Then someone else deals with it," he snapped back at him. "You're not in charge of absolutely everything, and you're not responsible for it either. You may be our Prince, Legolas, but you're also just one elf. You cannot take all of this onto your shoulders."

Legolas shot him a look. "You know that I'm not," he said. "Everyone else is working just as hard as I am." His gaze softened slightly as it met Belhadron's. "I'm fine," he said. "I really am."

Belhadron snorted. "You're not, but I'm not even going to try and argue that one," he replied. "Just, please stop for a moment. Get some rest."

Legolas shook his head. "Give me two hours," he said. "And then I'll come off duty."

"Fine," Belhadron murmured. He could recognise the stubborn tone in Legolas' voice, and whilst he certainly hadn't given up on this, for now he would leave it alone, and try again later. He stood from his chair. "I'll have the kitchens send something up for you, so please actually eat it before you leave this room. I'll be…" He trailed off with a sigh. "I don't know where I'll be, but I won't be in my rooms. I'll go… I don't know, I might spend some time on the training fields. See who I can terrorize down there."

"Hypocrite," Legolas murmured, but it was with a fleeting smile, and Belhadron huffed a laugh. He dropped a hand onto Legolas' shoulder, squeezing it briefly, before he left.

The door swung shut behind him. There was quiet for a moment, broken only by the sound of the fire murmuring in the hearth. Legolas shook his head, and then picked up his quill. The sound of scratching against parchment picked up once again against the crackle of logs in the hearth.

0-o-0-o-0

Rhavaniel glanced at Belhadron as she entered the room. "Aren't you off duty?" she asked.

"Technically, yes," Belhadron replied with a sigh. He was sat at the table, writing something out on a piece of parchment. There was a stack of sealed scrolls to one side, each bearing the seal of the realm. He glanced up at Rhavaniel as she took a seat at the table. "Legolas went off duty an hour ago," he explained. "So I'm just finishing some things up before I go."

Rhavaniel shook her head, sinking down in one of the chairs and stretching out her hand. "He's not off duty," she said. "He's down on the training fields."

Belhadron jolted. "What?" he asked. "He told me he'd be another two hours and then go off duty. It's been nearly four hours since then, and when I looked, he wasn't in here or on the archery field below. I'd assumed he'd gone to sleep, or was with the King."

"He's been on one of the far training fields for the past hour or so, from what it looks like," Rhavaniel said. "I could see him from the window in the healing wards." There was a slight bitterness in her voice as she spoke of them, but it was nothing new to Belhadron. She spent hours each day with the healers, working on her hand and arm, and she disliked every minute of it.

Rhavaniel glanced at Belhadron, seeing the expression on his face. She smiled wryly. "He was probably all the way out there to avoid you."

Belhadron sighed, and dropped his head into his hands. "I can't stop him," he murmured.

Rhavaniel perched on the edge of the table opposite him, stretching out her hand and methodically flexing and bending each finger in turn. It was one of the many exercises the healers had her doing to try and strengthen the muscles of her hand and arm. "Have you really tried?" she asked.

Belhadron shot her a glare, and she shrugged. "You can't ever hold a grudge against Legolas," she said. "Usually that is a good thing, but in times like this, it makes it nearly impossible for you to stay angry at him, really angry, long enough to actually change his mind. At least not when you are in front of him."

Belhadron heaved another sigh. "I know," he muttered. "But he's going to work himself into the ground if he doesn't stop. I know it's getting bad again, and I know when we were away he took a fair amount of the weight from our absence, but he doesn't seem to realise that he's not the only one trying to keep the realm together here."

"Then tell him," Rhavaniel replied.

"It's not exactly that easy," Belhadron shot back. Rhavaniel sighed softly, and a smile curved the corners of her lips.

"You and I both know that in a few moments, you are going to get up and go down to him on the training fields," she said. "It's not even a choice for you. We both know your loyalty lies with him above anything else." Belhadron made to protest, but she levelled him with a look, and he sunk back into his chair.

"You won't fix everything tonight," she said. "You won't fix much at all tonight, and won't until the weight on our backs is lighter than it is now, until things are quieter once again. But you can try, at least, and you can help him."

Belhadron paused, and then dropped his head down onto the table. "Why are you always right?" he murmured, voice muffled by the wood. "Doesn't it get annoying after a while?"

Rhavaniel huffed a wry laugh. "Go and get our Prince," she said. "And if he's being too stubborn to listen to you, then I'm sure that there is someone else he might listen too."

Belhadron laughed weakly. "He'll ground me for a month if I do that," he said. "So I will try to not do that if I have to." He shook his head, and then pushed back his chair with a squeal. "Wish me luck."

Rhavaniel offered him a smile. "I have every faith in you," she said. "Well, almost."

0-o-0-o-0

The training fields sprawled out to the north and west of the stronghold, acres and acres of fields split up with copses of trees and long, low sheds. These were filled with weapons and more equipment besides, archery targets and bags of clay balls that rang with a soft chime when tossed up, mats for hand sparring and the essential healing supplies for when something went wrong.

Further away from the stronghold, there were a few fields that were hidden from the view of most by thick copses of trees and undergrowth. These were the fields that belonged almost exclusively to the elite, to the small companies each beholden to a captain. Rhavaniel had her own field, even further out, to prevent her spies from being watched when training.

It was on one of these fields that Belhadron found Legolas. He was working through drills with some of the elves who were part of their elite companies, his tunic clinging to his back with sweat. The elves looked haggard, pushing themselves too hard for too long to fight back against threats to their realm. All of them were as fierce in their devotion to the realm and its people as Legolas and Belhadron were; it was why they were out here, in the dusk, training once more.

Belhadron cleared his throat, and levelled Legolas with a glare as he stepped onto the field. "Two hours," he said. "That's what you told me. Four hours ago."

The elves on the field exchanged wary glances at the heat in Belhadron's voice, and sheathed their weapons. Legolas looked over at them. "You're dismissed," he said, and Belhadron could hear the weariness in his voice. The elves quickly left, not wanting to get stuck between the two of them.

"Four hours ago," Belhadron said through gritted teeth. "What are you still doing here?"

"What does it look like?" Legolas asked, and he just sounded weary. "I thought you weren't on duty."

"I thought you weren't either," Belhadron shot back.

"I forgot," Legolas said, sheathing his long hunting knife in his belt. "I know, I'm sorry, but I forgot. Give me half an hour and then I'll come in."

"No, you'll come in now," Belhadron said. "Because I know you, and half an hour will become one hour, which will become two, and then at some point you will collapse somewhere because you become too exhausted to put one foot in front of the other." Legolas made to say something, and Belhadron fixed him with a look. "Don't tell me it's not true," he said. "We both know it is."

"Give me half an hour," Legolas said again, turning away. "I've got a few more things to finish up."

Belhadron threw his hands up in the air. "You know what?" he asked. "I'm fed up of this. I'm done. Get yourself inside, right now."

"You do realise that you don't have any authority over me, right?" Legolas asked. "You are my second in command. If I give you an order, then you have to follow it. That is not in question."

"Don't try to question my loyalty," Belhadron snapped. "And that's not the point. You are exhausted, and you need to stop." He grabbed Legolas' shoulder to stop him from turning away. "Please, come inside with me."

"I'm fine," Legolas murmured, shrugging off Belhadron's grip. "I really am. I'm tired, but then we all are, and none of our problems are going to get solved if we stop every time we get a little weary."

"None of our problems are going to be solved if you collapse out of sheer exhaustion because you're too stubborn to listen to reason," Belhadron shot back. "You do not have to take the weight of the world on your shoulders."

"Do you honestly think I am trying to do that?" Legolas asked. "I'm just doing what I can to keep our home safe. It's what all of us are doing. And I'm not going to stop doing that."

Belhadron felt like it would be easier to repeatedly run into a brick wall than try and win this argument. "I'm not asking you to," he said through gritted teeth. "All I'm asking is that you come inside, go to your rooms, and sleep until dawn. It's not that difficult a thing."

"Give me half an hour," Legolas repeated, and Belhadron threw his hands up into the air.

"I swear, it's impossible with you sometimes," he snapped. "And I'm not going to stand here and repeat the same damn thing over and over again in the hope that it will somehow get through your stubbornness and you will actually listen." He levelled Legolas with a glare. "I'm going inside," he said. "If you are not inside in twenty minutes, then I will personally hunt you down, knock you out, and tie you to your bed." He turned and stalked back towards the stronghold, and Legolas watched, hand on the hilt of his long knife, until he disappeared from view amongst the trees.

0-o-0-o-0

Thranduil looked up as the sound of footsteps reached his ears. He was in his study, as he usually was in the evenings, and looking over some of the reports from the past few days. The footsteps did not sound hurried, as if something bad had occurred, but they were quick enough that he put down the report.

There was a sharp knock on the door, and then a guard stepped in. "Captain Belhadron is here to speak with you," she said, looking slightly alarmed. Thranduil waved one hand, and the guard had barely stepped aside when Belhadron pushed the door open.

He bowed low, but Thranduil could see the clenched fists by his sides, and the muscle jumping in his jaw. He had thought that Belhadron was more rested after his two weeks away, for the captain had looked more at ease upon coming back two weeks ago, but perhaps he had not been paying close enough attention. He made a note in his mind to check on Rhavaniel, and see if she knew how tightly the soldiers of his realm were wound, if their captain was this tense.

"What is it, Belhadron?" Thranduil asked once the door had shut. Belhadron gritted his teeth.

"Permission to speak freely?" he asked.

"Granted, of course," Thranduil replied. Belhadron nodded, pausing for a second and ducking his head. Thranduil arched a brow.

"Your son is going to kill himself if he keeps this up," Belhadron said suddenly, raising his head and meeting Thranduil's gaze. "He is exhausting himself for this realm, and I can't get him to stop."

"I highly doubt that," Thranduil replied. His voice was even, but it was difficult for him to keep it so when he could see the undisguised worry in Belhadron's face. "Legolas listens to you beyond almost anyone, Belhadron."

"He won't right now," Belhadron said. His gaze remained steady, but the heat in it slowly petered out. "I'm worried," he confessed. "When Rhavaniel and I came back, we thought that we had made the right decision to take those two weeks, but now I'm really not that sure. And I'm worried about him."

Thranduil studied him for a moment, and then made up his mind. "Sit down," he said, his voice softening slightly. Belhadron sank into the seat opposite Thranduil, and sighed slightly.

"The quiet period, whenever that was, is now finished," he said. "We are inundated with problems now. All of them would be nothing unusual, normally, but our ranks are so depleted that we are struggling to find enough people to cover the patrols, whilst training up whoever we can find to take the places of the dead." Belhadron shook his head. "And what Legolas is trying to do is nearly impossible for any elf, let alone one that hasn't managed to step away ever since we returned home."

Thranduil regarded Belhadron, and found himself wondering yet again just how this elf had ended up so invaluable to him. He'd seen Belhadron take hits again and again, and shake them off because he'd taken them for Legolas and wouldn't have done anything else. The two of them, the loyalty between them, it was infamous amongst the soldiers of the realm. They were held up as examples to the soldiers, of what they could become. Thranduil wondered how many of them would ever realise that the two of them were just tired.

Thranduil studied Belhadron for a moment longer. "I don't know if I need to remind you of this again," he said. "But you are my son's second in command, and you don't have to be more. You aren't responsible for him."

"Aren't I?" asked Belhadron. "After all we've been through, all we've done, am I not responsible for him in some way? Besides, my Lord," he said. "You know where my loyalty lies, and I do not regret that. But my influence only goes so far, especially when confronted with Legolas in a stubborn mood."

Thranduil laughed softly. "Even my influence does not reach too far when Legolas is feeling particularly stubborn," he said. "So I would not worry there. I'll call him in here and see what I can do." Belhadron ducked his head in a nod, and Thranduil studied him for a long moment once again.

"How much work is there to do tonight?" he asked.

Belhadron thought for a second. "We have to draw up the patrols for the day after tomorrow, and the training rotas for the new recruits, along with the usual problems of running the army. And then two of Rhavaniel's people are due in during the night, so we will have to deal with whatever they bring in."

Thranduil nodded. "Nothing that would necessarily require Legolas' attention," he said, not asking it as a question. "That's good enough. Send word with one of the guards that I want to see Legolas, and when Rhavaniel's people come in I would like to hear what they have to say."

Belhadron nodded. "Of course, my Lord," he said. "I'll send them your way as soon as they arrive."

"Aren't you off duty?" Thranduil asked. Belhadron huffed a weary laugh.

"I am," he said with a tired smile. "But it doesn't matter. I was going to wait up for Rhavaniel's spies anyway, to see what they had to say. I can catch some sleep on one of the divans in the common room."

"You'll regret it in the morning," Thranduil warned. "Those things are terrible for your back."

"I know," Belhadron said with a wry smile. "But I don't mind. I've slept in far worse conditions. And it'll make Legolas feel a little easier as well, knowing that I'm there in case anything happens." He nodded to Thranduil, rising from his chair. "Thank you," he said. "My Lord."

"Of course," Thranduil said. He nodded to Belhadron, who bowed to him and then left. Thranduil smiled slightly. He sometimes forgot, or overlooked, just how much the realm could rely on Belhadron at times, and how much he had given in service. He owed Belhadron an awful lot, both as a King and a father. Of course, he rarely said anything of it, and Belhadron would take little in rewards for his service, but Thranduil sometimes caught himself wondering just what would have happened, both to the realm and to his son, if Belhadron had died a long time ago.

0-o-0-o-0

Legolas leant forwards quickly and caught the slip of parchment before it fell off the desk. "Did he say what he wanted?" he asked, stacking the parchment in front of him into a loose pile and not bothering to look up.

The elf standing just inside the door shook his head. "No, my Lord," he said. "The King only asked that you see him in his main study at your earliest convenience."

Legolas huffed a laugh. If his father had asked for him at his earliest convenience, then Legolas didn't doubt he was already late. He grabbed a few of the reports off the table, and stood. "Thank you," he said, brushing past the messenger. "I'll head to him now."

The messenger bowed, a jerk of his head as Legolas passed him. He seemed nervous, and as Legolas briefly glanced at him and took in the new leathers and armour, polished to an extreme, he realised that the elf had only completed his training perhaps a few weeks ago. Legolas tried not to get too irritated at the slightly wide-eyed look that he received from the elf. It wasn't his fault that he was new, or that those elves, his friends, who had been serving for centuries couldn't help but be bitter, on some level, about those elves who joined up in the name of honour and glory and doing the right thing.

He strode down the corridors of the stronghold, his home, and once again pushed down the weariness that clung to his bones. He didn't have time for it, even though part of him knew that Belhadron was actually right. If he stopped now, he didn't know if he could regain the momentum that was one of the few things keeping him on his feet.

He knocked on his father's study door, poking his head around the door with a tired smile. "You wanted to see me?" he asked.

Thranduil looked up. "Of course, come in," he replied. "Have you read the report from Alassien?"

"I did," Legolas replied. He came into the room and slumped down into one of the chairs across the desk from Thranduil. "I honestly think she was being a bit optimistic about the numbers, but then she has a different view than I do. She lost far fewer from her company outside Erebor."

Thranduil nodded. "It is consistent with other information that has come across my table, if slightly optimistic," he said. "I am waiting on Rhavaniel's estimates, and then we will see where we are."

"Of course," Legolas said. "Her spies are coming back in tonight. I was going to-"

"Belhadron is waiting up for them," Thranduil interjected.

Legolas blinked. "He's off duty."

A slow smile curled Thranduil's lips. "Aren't you?" he asked.

There was a pause, and then Legolas scowled. It almost amused Thranduil to see that expression on his face. It reminded him far too much of Legolas when he was a child and Thranduil refused him something, only now the expression looked far more dangerous. "I suppose that was Belhadron's doing," he said with a sigh. "I told him I was fine."

"You're exhausted," Thranduil said swiftly. "When was the last time you slept?"

Legolas blinked, and paused for a moment, thinking. Thranduil shook his head. "That's as good as an answer," he said. "I shouldn't have to tell you that it's dangerous to push yourself this far, that it's a risk to everyone else as well as yourself."

Legolas looked affronted. "I'm not going to risk anything," he said, heat rising in his voice. "I know perfectly well what my limits are."

Thranduil just levelled him with a look. It was silent for long enough that Legolas looked away, running a hand through his hair with a sigh. "What if something happens?" he asked, his voice suddenly small in the room.

Thranduil sat back in his chair. "It is unlikely, and you know that," he said. "But given what our situation is, not an unfounded thought." He sighed. "I've been kept awake for far too many nights by the same thoughts."

"If something happens and I am not there, then it becomes my fault," Legolas said. "If someone dies and I am in my rooms, asleep, then I am to blame. Because if I am awake, then there might be something I can do, but if I am asleep, I can do nothing."

Thranduil nodded slowly. "A compromise," he suggested. "You come off duty and rest, but you sleep on the divan in here. That way, if anything does happen, you will be one of the first to know." He would undoubtedly hear any news as soon as it reached the stronghold, if it was important.

Legolas recognised defeat when he saw it. "Fine," he said, throwing his hands up into the air. "I'll sleep on the divan in here." He paused. "Where is Belhadron, if he's waiting up for the spies?"

"He's apparently dozing on one of the couches in the common room," Thranduil replied. He shook his head slightly, a small smile on his face. "Sometimes I don't think that I thank him enough."

"I can tell you right now that he doesn't want a lordship," Legolas said with a wry smile. "You can offer him one, but I don't think he will accept." He shrugged at Thranduil's raised brow. "He thinks it will make more trouble for him with the various advisors and council members who dislike a Silvan elf being so close to the Sindarin Prince."

Thranduil huffed. "I thought that problem had been solved?" he asked. Legolas just looked at him.

"I don't want to speak ill of the council members," he said. "But it's not ever going to be solved, not completely. Of course, they're a lot more accepting of the Silvan presence in our army's command than they were when Belhadron first became my second, but for a few people it will always be at the back of their minds." He yawned, his jaw cracking, and Thranduil laughed softly.

"There's a spare blanket in one of the cupboards somewhere," he said. "If you want a better pillow, just take one off of my bed."

"I've slept in far worse conditions," Legolas said with a wry smile. "I'm sure I'll cope."

"Belhadron said the same," Thranduil said. He huffed a brief laugh, remembering some of the places he had been forced to rest in, in his days as Prince and the early days of wearing his crown, when they were still working ceaselessly to keep the realm together and he did not have the supposed luxury of remaining behind whilst others patrolled and hunted and killed to make sure they survived. "There are definitely worse places to sleep."

0-o-0-o-0

Belhadron dragged himself off the divan, already missing the warmth of the blanket now pooled on the couch. "What do you have?" he asked in a sleep-roughened voice, running one hand over his face.

"Are you sure you're awake enough to hear it?" one of the spies asked with a smile. The two of them were standing at one end of the table, unloading some of the weapons. There was already a substantial pile on the table, with many weapons that Belhadron didn't care to recognise. He glared at them, forgoing his sword belt to just sheath his knife in the small of his back.

"What do you have?" he asked again. "And do I need to find Rhavaniel, wherever she's disappeared to."

"Nothing certain," one of the spies replied. "But a lot that could be, if you looked at it in the right light. And you might want to send someone to find Rhavaniel, yes, because she will probably be interested in what we have to say."

"I'll send a messenger, but the King wants to speak with you as well," Belhadron said. "Are you done disposing of your less favourable weapons, or do you need a minute?"

Both of the spies laughed. It was fairly well known amongst the captains and the spies that Belhadron wasn't much of a fan of some of the weapons that the spies used, having taken up Legolas' stance on them fairly quickly. Rhavaniel needled him over it constantly, in lighter times, and many of her spies were all too ready to do the same when prompted.

For now, though, they were tired enough to let it pass. "We're ready enough," one of them said, and they shed their grey cloaks to place them over their pile of weapons. "I'm assuming these doors won't be opened until we get back? I'm rather fond of that particular knife there."

"I'll lock the doors," Belhadron replied. "Only the captains have the key, so your precious weapons will remain undisturbed." He huffed a weary laugh, and shut and locked the door behind the two spies as they left.

The halls were quieter, this late at night, though they were not silent. There were still elves working throughout the night, but they were experienced. Many of them had been in service of the realm for a long time now, and knew not to ask questions when the second in command of the Prince of the realm was seen with two other elves who were mud-stained and weary, heading into the King's private quarters.

Rhavaniel found them in the hallway, falling into step beside Belhadron without so much of a glance at him. Her right arm was in a sling, held close to her chest, and she had a hunting knife tucked in her belt. Belhadron guessed that she had been training, and that it hadn't gone too well, if her arm was hurting enough for her to use the sling. But he said nothing, and all Rhavaniel offered him was a small smile before she dropped back to talk to her spies.

They barely even glanced at the guards that stood at the doors, striding straight past them and through into the private quarters. There were various doors off to both side, all unmarked and the same. Belhadron was fairly certain that it had been done on purpose, but whether it was another layer of security for Thranduil and Legolas, or just done to irritate people, he didn't know.

But he'd spent long enough in these halls to know which door was which, and knocked on the door to Thranduil's study. There was a murmured command to enter. Rhavaniel hung back, talking in hushed tones with her spies as she debriefed them.

Thranduil was seated at his desk still, writing something down. Belhadron glanced to the side, and a small smile curled his lips as he saw Legolas, fast asleep under a blanket on the divan that was pushed up against the wall.

"He's been like that for four hours," Thranduil said softly, and Belhadron glanced up to meet his gaze.

"Rhavaniel's two elves just returned," he said. "They're outside, if you want to speak with them. Rhavaniel is talking with them now." He glanced at Legolas again. "I can wake him up, if you want me to."

"He'll only be cross with me if you don't," Thranduil said. "But whatever it is that the spies have, it can wait until morning, at least for the two of you. You seem fairly calm, so I take that it isn't urgent?"

"They would have said if it was," Belhadron replied. "And the two of them seem tired, but not run into the ground." He paused, all of Thranduil's words catching up to him. "Wait, for the two of us?"

A smile tugged at the corners of Thranduil's lips. "I haven't forgotten that you are also not on duty, Belhadron," he reminded him. "Wake up my son, get him to sleep in his own bed and then go to sleep yourself. I need both of you to be well rested and ready for whatever is coming next, not half asleep on your feet because you've been pushing yourself too far. Sleep in your rooms, in Legolas' rooms; I don't particularly care. Just get some rest."

"Of course," Belhadron said. He crouched down beside Legolas on the divan and reached out. "Legolas," he said softly, shaking his shoulder. "Legolas, wake up."

Legolas groaned softly, and his face scrunched up before he finally opened his eyes. "What is it?" he asked, pushing himself up to a sitting position, the blanket pooling in his lap.

Belhadron huffed a soft laugh. "Don't worry, nothing has happened," he said, tugging the blanket off the divan and folding it up. "But your father is about to kick both of us out of here unless we leave now, so let's get you to an actual bed."

Legolas pushed his hair back from his face, and glanced at where Thranduil was watching them, sitting at his desk. "Rhavaniel's spies are back, aren't they?" he asked.

Belhadron paused, and Thranduil merely nodded. "It's not urgent," he said. "If it was, they wouldn't be waiting outside. Rhavaniel has it covered. Go to bed."

Legolas held his gaze for a moment longer, and then looked longingly at the folded blanket at the end of the divan. He sighed. "Fine," he murmured. "I know my limits." More accurately, he knew when he had been out manoeuvred by his best friend and his father, but he wasn't going to say that.

There was another door to Thranduil's study, other than the one leading to the hallway. At Thranduil's nod, Belhadron gently steered Legolas towards it with one hand on his shoulder. Legolas was awake, but only just, and he nearly walked into the door before he thought to try and open it. The living room of Thranduil's quarters was beyond the door, and Belhadron tried not to look at anything as they threaded through the room to yet another door. No matter how many times he did this, it always felt like he was intruding on some terrible level. He was still King, after all, and moments like this, where Thranduil was more father than King in front of him, were rare enough.

They made it to Legolas' rooms without Legolas or Belhadron falling over their feet or walking into a doorframe, though it was a close thing. Belhadron found the past few days catching up with him and his jaw cracked as he yawned. Legolas huffed a laugh.

"Hypocrite," he murmured with a tired smile. "You need to be well rested as well. The realm depends on you as much as it does on me."

"If you really believed that, then you would have taken two weeks off at some point," Belhadron replied, but he did so with a smile. "And I know. Your father already told me as such."

Legolas tugged off his shirt, searching through one of his closets for another to sleep in. Belhadron nudged him aside, pulling out one of his own shirts. He'd been keeping a few changes of clothes in Legolas' rooms for a while now, for when they ended up working until they were exhausted and he was too tired to go back to his own room, or for when he was recuperating from a bad injury and Legolas insisted he stay in these rooms until he was better.

He yawned again, which made Legolas yawn, and both of them huffed weary laughs. "You really should take some time off at some point," Belhadron murmured.

Legolas shrugged. "I will, when things are quieter," he replied. "I'm sure Elladan and Elrohir will make their way over the mountains soon enough, once they hear the news, and they won't hesitate to drag me out for hunting trips." He sighed softly, and glanced over at Belhadron. "I know I was being difficult today, and I'm sorry," he said. "I know you were just worried. Even if you really didn't have to involve my father."

"I really did," Belhadron replied with a wry grin. "It worked, didn't it? Anyway, I accept the apology, and will remind you of all this the next time you decide to test your limits and not sleep for several days." He toed off his boots and slumped on one edge of the bed, beginning to undo the braid in his hair.

Legolas shrugged. "Fair enough," he said. He yawned again, and then all but fell onto the other side of the bed. Belhadron snorted in amusement.

"Your braids will get tangled if you sleep with them in," he said.

"Don't care," Legolas muttered through a pillow, rolling over and pulling a blanket over him. "Go to sleep."

"Yes, captain," Belhadron said with a grin. "Right away, captain." He lay down and tugged at the blanket until he had pulled enough away from Legolas. "Please make sure there isn't a knife under your pillow," he muttered. "I really don't want you waking up in the middle of the night and trying to stab me."

Legolas murmured something unintelligible, and then fell silent, his eyes unfocusing as he slipped into sleep. Belhadron huffed a soft laugh, but all too quickly he felt sleep tugging at him, pulling him down. He didn't fight it, and within moments the room was quiet and still.

0-o-0-o-0

In the heavy darkness, it took him a few moments to work out what had woken him. A candle flame flickered into view, bright against the soft darkness of the early morning hours, and Legolas winced. He shifted and sat up, taking a few seconds to place the heavy weight on the other side of the bed as Belhadron, who was still fast asleep.

Legolas pushed himself up onto his elbows. "What is it?" he asked, his voice roughened by sleep and a mere whisper.

Thranduil shook his head. "I didn't mean to wake you, but I suppose it was inevitable," he replied softly. Legolas knew perfectly well that his father just wanted to check on him, that sometimes the day wore at him until he could not rest without knowing his son was safe. Legolas merely smiled, sitting up on the bed.

"What did Rhavaniel's people say?" he asked. "Is it important?"

"It always is," Thranduil replied with a shrug. "But it can wait until the morning. We will not affect whatever outcome there is if we start working in a few hours, instead of now." Legolas arched a brow, and Thranduil smiled slightly. "Well, we will not have any great effect on the outcome. Don't worry about it."

"You do realise that saying that is completely ineffective?" Legolas asked with a grin. "Just telling me to not worry does not instantly stop me from worrying. It doesn't work like that."

"Sometimes I think my life would be easier if I hadn't insisted on so much tutoring for you as a child," Thranduil replied. He huffed a soft laugh. "It's still a few hours from dawn. Go back to sleep. I should go before Belhadron wakes up as well." He brushed a hand through Legolas' hair, pushing it back from his face. "If you leave your braids in they will get tangled."

Legolas' jaw cracked as he yawned. "I don't really care," murmured, already lying back down and pulling the covers up. Belhadron hadn't moved, still buried under the covers and various pillows and fast asleep.

Thranduil laughed softly, and blew out the candle in his hand. "Go to sleep," he said again. And so Legolas did.

 _finis_

 _Hope you enjoyed it. The next story is going to be a few chapters, and is Elladan and Elrohir coming to Mirkwood once they receive the news about Erebor. That story isn't actually finished, though, so it might be a little while before it's published. Again, a huge thank you to everyone who has stuck with me, even though I've been a bit of a neglectful author. There will be more._


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